


To Be Forgotten

by OceanMelon



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - 19th century Paris, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Hockey, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Death of an Original Character, Depression, M/M, Reincarnation, Suicide, death of a minor character, implied alcoholism, it's just Marco who plays hockey though, jeanmarco, more tags as we go, non-graphic references to domestic abuse, various background pairings - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-24 17:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 75,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3776962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanMelon/pseuds/OceanMelon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his fifteenth year, Jean Kirschstein discovers what it is that has made him feel so restless for so long. Something as simple as a painting in a gallery and suddenly everything makes sense. Ever since, he's had dreams every night in which he's living as a woman named Jeanne Blumstein during the Second French Empire. But these are just dreams, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

You know that feeling when you could swear you've forgotten something unbelievably important? Of course you do. Everyone does. And then it always turns out that you have. Like that one time when you got half way to the coast before you realised you’d forgotten to pack your swimmers. Or that other time when you’d just stepped off the plane and you can see your grandparents at the arrivals gate, waiting to pick you up, and you suddenly remember you didn't bring that High School Musical T-shirt they gave you last Christmas, the one you’d thrown into the back of your wardrobe at the first opportunity. Everyone’s had those moments. But these are tiny and don’t matter. You can always buy a cheap pair of swimmers when you get to the beach or turn back for the ones you’d left behind. Your grandparents are hardly going to disown you for not pretending to love the present they gave you and, let’s be real, they’re so old they probably don’t even remember what they got each of their eight trillion grandchildren last Christmas. 

These are stupid, forgetful mistakes, sure, but they don’t really matter because you eventually realise what it is you've forgotten and can fix it. My problem was that I had no fucking clue what I’d buried deep in my memory and no idea how to go about dredging it back to the surface. It just sort of sat there at the back of my mind, tugging away with this strange sense of restlessness every minute of every day. I started to look forward to forgetting birthdays or to bring my lunch in to class because every time I would think, ‘this must be it. This is what I could never remember!’ 

It never was and I only found myself with disappointed friends and an empty stomach, still hounded with that same restlessness. What could I do, though? I didn't know what I’d forgotten. Really, there was nothing I could do. I could only wait for everything to fall to shit around me just so I could say, “Oh, so that was it.”

And so the days passed. I ignored the little tickle at the back of my mind and the world kept turning. Until a trip to the art gallery in year nine. I wasn’t there because I liked art – although I did, even if I’d never shown anyone the stacks and stacks of sketchbooks piled under my bed – it was a French trip that brought me to the gallery that day and to that one painting. In a corner of the exhibition, surrounded by the biggest names in French Realism, one sad little portrait clung to the white gallery walls. 

Artist: Unknown. Title: A Portrait of Her. Date: Circa 1855.

It wasn't in a gilded frame, it didn't even have the little red braided cord sectioning it off from sticky hands, but it was there that I stopped as the rest of the disinterested 15 year olds disappeared around the corner and out of view. 

A lake. A woman. A field.            

I don’t know how long I stood there staring at them all. A long time, I guess. I couldn't hear the rest of the class enjoying their day off school anymore.

“Impressive, isn't it?” a voice asked from beside me. 

I don’t really want to admit it to you but I probably gave a little squeak of surprise. Just a little one. Before I turned to see who had spoken.

It was an old man. He was probably the janitor, judging by the broom he leant on and the dry, calloused redness of his knuckles.

I shrugged and gave a non-committal response.

He didn't say anything else for a moment. I could feel his eyes on me, though, and I wondered whether he was seeing the same thing I was. Turns out he wasn't. 

“Well, I’ll be damned... kid’s these days can still be stunned by decent art...” muttered the old man at last and he shuffled away.

It wasn't that. I wasn't stunned by the beauty of the piece or the meaning behind each individual brushstroke or the way light had been replicated with nothing more than pigment on canvas. I mean, I knew I liked drawing. It was something I’d always done. It was just that I hadn't realised I could be so  _ into  _ art. Literally. If I took away the obvious difference between us (namely, gender) then I was staring back into my own face. The woman in the painting, the woman who had been painted by some love-struck artist over 150 years ago, was me. She didn't just look like me. I knew, beyond a shred of doubt, we were the same person.

_ Oh, so that was it. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid there's no real meaning behind Jean's choice of humming music to clean by. Coming Down was just what was stuck in my head at the time I was writing this...
> 
> By the way, I forgot to tell you last chapter but this idea actually came from some fanart on tumblr. I can't find it anymore, though... From what I remember it was just Jean and Marco looking up at a painting. They may or may not have been women in the painting. If you know the art I'm talking about, link it to me. I'd love to find it again.

Trost in the summer was like living in a fan-forced oven. Hot and dry and windy. The breeze would blow in from the sea, wet and cool as sea air tends to be, but before it had crossed even one half of the city, the parched land had sucked it dry and still begged for more. 

I suppose I should have been thankful it wasn’t humid. The heat would have been unbearable then. But hot and dry is unpleasant in its own way. I would return home in the afternoon feeling like my eyes were shrivelling in my skull and my skin was pulled too tight over the bones. 

I’m pretty sure I spent most of that summer lying on my bunk, staring up at the ceiling and wishing I were back at my parents place with their glorious air conditioner.  

I’d just changed courses at the end of the last semester and was already regretting it. Changing courses was all well and good. I mean, I didn’t regret getting out of a degree I didn’t enjoy, but it meant that unless I wanted to spend an entire extra year at uni, I’d be taking classes every summer semester from there on out. And summer in Trost is like living in a fan-forced oven. 

I met Marco in January. When the beaches are so hot, all the locals retreat indoors and only the tourists with no real understanding of the Australian sun are brave enough to venture onto the sand. When cafes and ice-creameries open their doors earlier in the morning and hold them open a little later in the evening in the hopes of enticing some of those sunburnt tourists in, hoping to grab a few more before they all went home at the end of summer.  Trost was slowly filling up with young people as the next batch of first years rolled into town. After all, we didn’t have a whole lot to offer other than our two unis. There were talks of parties and campus tours, social clubs and the price of textbooks. The UTSA people tried to ambush me a couple of times on campus, wanting to know if I’d like to join them. The answer was a very definite no.

I was cleaning when I met Marco. Probably not the most impressive activity to be doing when meeting someone for the first time. But Connie, my roommate, was coming back the next week and… well, safe to say I hadn’t really cared much about the state of our room over the break. 

I didn’t even notice the sound of the creaking door as he stuck his head through into my room.

“ _ Coming Down _ , right?” That was the first thing he ever said to me. “Ball Park Music? I listen to that song all the time.”

I just looked at him. A stranger had just come into my dorm, then into my room as if that was just the most normal thing in the world, and then quizzed me on what I chose to mindlessly hum while I cleaned.

What was I supposed to say to such a person? 

To be honest, I don’t think either of us gave the best first impression. There I was, dirty rag flung over one shoulder to keep it out of the way and a pile of Connie’s text books under one arm, still in my pyjamas at one in the afternoon. And there he was, a stranger in my room, smiling away as if he belonged there. 

But I trusted him. I knew I trusted him the moment I saw him.

“I wouldn’t know,” I replied at last, dropping the rag onto the windowsill and wiping my hands on my sleeping shorts. “I’ve only ever heard my cousins play it.”

He was the sort of person who just seems really clean. His perfectly 50/50 parted hair and that gentle smile, even the way his freckles seemed to be an intrinsic part of his face - belonging there just as much as his eyes or his nose - all gave him that air of being... clean. And, despite his torn jeans and the flannie rolled to the elbows, I could see him very easily, five years down the track, wearing a three-piece suit with a secretary in tow. This boy was going to go far. 

I wondered absently whether he could be part of some gang. You know, the guy no one ever expects to be the Mafia boss but who still ends up being the one with the gun? Simply because I couldn’t believe someone so pure could exist, there had to be something wrong with him. 

That’s the word.  _ Pure _ . Like some sort of freckled Jesus. And what was I? Well, certainly not a saint. 

Still, I knew he couldn’t really be a Mafia boss. I knew because I knew him, despite only meeting him for the first time. And I knew he really was that sparkly, wedding dress sort of pure that is supposed to be impossible. 

He didn’t know me, though. At least, I don’t think he did. So I held out my hand all the same and introduced myself.

“Zj-?” His first attempt.

“Jean. Like John but it’s French so the J is soft and N is kind of implied but not really there.” 

He smiled again. “Jean.” I decided I liked how my name sounded from his mouth.

We stood there awkwardly for a moment before he seemed to suddenly realise he’d let himself in. 

“Sorry about this,” he said, gesturing to his person inside my room. “The door was open and… You wouldn’t happen to know where Bert is, would you?”

I dumped Connie’s books onto his desk and leant back against it. “He’s not in his room?” 

“Not unless he’s hiding under the bed.”

“I doubt he’d fit.”

He laughed at that. He laughs easily, I know. 

“Well, when he gets back, can you tell him I was here? And that I left the stuff I borrowed in his room.”

“Yeah. ‘course.”

“Thanks.”

And that was that. Just like that, Marco tortoised his head back out of my swelteringly hot room and left. 

The end? Perhaps it could have been. This is always the moment where I feel like things could have gone down a completely different path. Because, had I not been dreaming about this man every night since I was fifteen, I would have left it at that. I would have accepted him as ‘Bert’s friend’ and filed him away in that part of my memory that does nothing but gather cobwebs.  But I  _ had _ been dreaming about him. I knew every inch of his face. I had seen it a thousand times and I was so incredibly floored by the reality of him being right there – right inside the room where I slept – that I had been able to do nothing except pretend everything was fine.

He was real.

He was real and that fact had seemed more impossible than anything else in the universe until that very moment. 

 

**

 

_ Papa stands silently in one corner of the room. His scowl gives the storm outside a run for its money and I can practically feel the fear flowing off Maman like heat. She attacks the darning in her hand with everything she has as if training up the action so that when he inevitably drinks his fill and comes after her with fists flailing she can fend him off with nothing more than a needle.  _

_ “It is gone?” he says at last and Maman jolts a little in her seat. “All of it?” _

_ “Oui, Papa, it is gone,” I answer and immediately have to duck the half-empty bottle of spirits he throws at my head. _

_ “I didn’t ask you!” he shouts and his voice rattles the pictures on the mantelpiece. _

_ “You, woman, is it all gone? Everything we hid?” He grabs Maman by her collar and she desperately tries to keep fixing his shirt, anything to pretend this isn’t happening. “Did you check properly?”  _

_ Maman gives a frantic nod, eyes still on the needle going in, out, in, out, of the fabric. Probably wishing it was his neck instead of just cloth.  _

_ Papa lets go of her collar but he does it with such force the armchair rocks back on two legs for a moment before it settles again. Maman keeps sewing without missing a beat.  _

_ “We will have to leave, Papa. Leave Paris and go elsewhere.” I raise my voice again and luckily he has nothing left to throw.  _

_ “No,” he says. _

_ “We have nothing left here, Papa! We cannot stay here anymore!” _

_ “No!” _

_ I flinch involuntarily as his voice echoes around the apartment. I wish I was stronger. Strong enough to get away. _

_ “No,” says Papa more quietly but I can see he has just put a lid over a simmering pot and soon it will all boil over again. “If worst comes to worst we shall sell you off, my girl. I would rather sell off my only daughter than leave Paris.” _

 

_ ** _

 

_ The man looks out of place in our dusty living room. Anything of value has already been sold and it is obvious to anyone with eyes that this job is our last chance. The money Papa had hid before the February Revolution had been stolen. He had seen the growing unrest in Paris and gambled on taking every Franc we owned and hiding it away so that the rioters could not steal it from us. It was almost ironic how the countermeasure Papa had taken against the money being stolen was the very same measure that let someone steal it.  _

_ That was three years ago.  _

_ It didn’t take long for poverty to eat away at Papa. He grew crankier by the day. Then, on my fifteenth birthday, Papa placed an advertisement in the newspaper. He really was selling me off but, thankfully, only as a model for a poor painter. I am safe from the brothel for the moment.  _

_ I watch the three of them – Papa, Maman and the strange man – from the hall, through a crack between then door and its frame.  _

_ “How old did you say you were, young man?” says Papa, the very image of a gentleman despite the bare wooden chair on which he sits and the fraying at his cuffs.  _

_ “I am twenty-four, sir,” the man replies. _

_ He sounds foreign but I have never been anywhere except Paris so I can’t tell where he might be from. I can’t tell if he looks foreign either. His skin is darker than mine but that is hardly saying anything now that Paris is filled with the poor who had been ploughing fields until recently. _

_ “And how many paintings have you sold so far?” continues Papa, unfazed by the man’s voice. _

_ The man looks away from my father and rubs a finger under his nose for a moment. “How many paintings? As of now?”  _

_ I watch my father’s brow furrow and I want to shout at the young man to run while he still can. But I can’t. I’m hiding.  _

_ “Yes, that is what I am asking.” After years of experience I can now pick the warning signs to Papa’s anger and when his Prussian accent starts leaking through, you know you’re on the first rung of a ladder you should probably climb back down from. _

_ “As of now, I still have not sold any paintings,” the man admits at last. _

_ I squint my eyes shut, waiting for the shouts and things to go flying across the room. But it’s still silent.  _

_ “Tell me, then. How can I be sure you will be able to pay me for letting my daughter model for you?” It’s then that I realise Papa doesn’t even care whether or not the young painter can pay for me. He just wants me gone. That’s why he isn’t angry. He doesn’t care that the man is penniless and has barely any prospects of ever not being so. _

_ The man coughs and scratches the back of his neck nervously. I can see him trying to wriggle out of this question. “Chiedo scusa, I don’t understand. You want to know where I will get the money to pay your daughter’s wages?” _

_ “Yes, that it what I am asking.” Papa’s voice is getting thick with anger but the young man doesn’t seem to notice. He just smiles and nods his head three times in quick succession. I am beginning to wonder whether he is an naïve or just an idiot. _

_ “While I do not have money, sir, if it helps to reassure you, I can write to my father. He is wealthy, though I don’t know what he does.” _

_ Papa looks mildly impressed. The poor boy has just doomed himself. By admitting that his father is wealthy, he has guaranteed that mine will squeeze him for every Franc he can get.  _

_ “Well, in that case, would you like to meet my daughter?” says Papa and I feel my blood run cold in my veins.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea why I’ve set part of this in Paris... I know next to nothing about anything French. I’ll try to keep my research comprehensive but, if you find something wrong (historically/factually), please tell me and I’ll fix it. (Please overlook the fact that I’m using standard Italian before the unification of Italy, though. I already know that’s wrong, I just don’t know any dialects.) Thanks as always for reading,  
> Ocean.


	3. Chapter 3

_ His eyes don’t see me as he works. He sees my shape and my colour but he doesn’t see me. That’s alright. It gives me time to watch him. To watch the way the end of his brush flicks up at the end of every stroke like a question mark, unsure if he’s moved it as he was intending to. To watch the way his tongue peeks out from between his lips without him noticing as he concentrates. To count the freckles dotted across his face and along his forearms, laid bare by his shirt rolled to the elbows. It is calming, watching Monsieur Bosch paint. He seems so hesitant but then he steps away from the easel at the end of the session and has created something beautiful. Something much more beautiful than even I could ever be and I’m well aware how far above average I am in terms of beauty. How could he not have sold a single painting yet? _

_ A man comes in through the door. He’s covered in white clay dust and slicked up to the elbows in slip. The clay drops in globs onto the tiled floor, wet and sticky and not at all pretty like Monsieur Bosch’s paints. He appears to live here, since he entered without so much as a knock. I knew this part of the city was crowded but to have two artists working and living in such a tiny studio just seems like too much. He waves to Monsieur Bosch and the painter offers a greeting in return in his own tongue. They throw the conversation back and forth between them as if they have forgotten I am still there and only able to understand French.  _

_ I shift a foot. It is going numb. In fact, all of me is going numb. And the light is slipping down the window of the tiny studio. _

_ “Signorina Blumstein, basta. Rimane lá, per favore. Smettere di muoversi. Grazie,” he says, not bothering to switch back to French after his conversation with the sculptor, and I have no idea what he means.  _

_ I shift my foot again, trying to get the blood back into it. _

_ “Mademoiselle Blumstein, please stop moving. Thank you,” he repeats. _

_ It would have been easier if he’d just said it in French to begin with. _

_ But he’s barely picked up his brush again when he notices the sun out the window.  _

_ “Ah! É gia tardi...” he mutters then turns on me with a winning grin. “It looks like the sun has given up on me for today. Shall we stop here?” _

_ I nod thankfully and step down from the box he’d had me standing on for close to six hours and walk over to the easel. He chews his lip and takes a step closer to his painting, as if unwilling to let me see but, eventually, steps aside and lets me marvel at myself. _

_ And so we stand as the setting sun paints the studio orange and the cries from the Parisian streets float in through the open window, with Monsieur Borsch looking anxiously over my shoulder as I look down on a version of myself infinitely more beautiful than reality. _

 

**

 

February came and the new school year began. Connie came back to Trost and I had to give up one half of our room again. Strangely, I didn’t find myself minding as much as I had at the beginning of the year before. At the start of first year, everything he did irritated me. The sound of his fingers tapping on his phone, or the sound of him chewing, the way he’d swing his legs over the side of his bunk just in the corner of my vision, how he’d laugh at something on facebook and then just wave me away with ‘don’t worry about it’ when I asked him what it was. Maybe it was just because it was my first time away from home. – my first time having to share a room with someone – that it irritated me so much. Whatever the case, I got used to it and, come second year, that tapping and chewing, laughing and swinging had all just become friendly background noise. They were just things that reminded me I wasn’t alone in the dorm. 

Perhaps I shouldn’t have worded it like that. That makes me sound lonely and I wasn’t. I was surrounded by people, how could I be lonely? 

 

I was walking to class the second time I met Marco. 

I’d just come out of my art history lecture, still groggy in the way that only sitting in a warm room and surrounded by monotonous voices can make you, and there he was: a tiny dark speck on the other side of the lawn. 

Looking back on it, this was another moment that could have never happened. If I wasn’t still clinging to that feeling that came when I realised my dreams weren’t just delusions, then I wouldn’t have hoisted my pack onto my back and sprinted across that lawn.

But I was. 

You know I was. 

That ‘so that was it’ feeling from that day at the art gallery when I was fifteen had always been an assumption. I had just guessed – an educated guess but a guess all the same – that the connection that had just formed in my head was true. The ongoing dreams had concreted the idea in my head but there had always been that one niggling thought:

_ Am I just imagining all this? _

It was entirely possible that I had seen a painting of a woman from 1855, decided she looked a bit like me, and then had just fabricated the rest – dreams and all.

But he was real.

I was stuck on this point again. He was real. I had met him. He was Marco, as he’d been then. He had that same stupid smile, those same eyes. I hadn’t made him up.

So I did run across that lawn, with more desperation than I should be willing to admit, and call out his name with a familiarity we didn’t have yet.

He turned and looked at me with confusion for a moment before that smile spread over his face again.

“Hey! Jean, right? Bert’s dorm-mate?”

“Yeah, that’s me. “

“So, what’s up? Did you need me for something.”

Ah. That’s right. We didn’t know each other anymore. I knew him but he didn’t know me. And strangers were hardly known for calling out to each other. 

I shrugged and pushed my hands deep into my jeans pockets. “Not really. I just recognised you so I guess I called out without thinking about it.”

To my relief, he laughed. He really does laugh easily. 

“Fair enough. You done with classes for the day?”

“Nah, still got a tute after this but I don’t really want to go,” I said, scratching at my thigh absently through the pocket lining. 

Was I still walking right? This was how conversations worked, didn’t they? 

I don’t think I’d been so self-conscious since the first day of high school when I found myself standing in a corridor, completely lost and surrounded by giants. 

“Yeah, I know that feeling. I just had a three-hour chem. lab and now I need to go to training. It’s been a long day.” He hoisted the sports bag on his shoulder a little as if to prove where he was going.

I tried to imagine Monsieur Bosch running around with a footy but quickly failed. It was hard to remember that just as I was no longer Jeanne Blumstein, Marco was no longer Monsieur Bosch. 

“Oh, what do you play?” I was aiming for a casual tone. 

“Hockey. Field hockey. You play?”

I scoffed and gestured to my scrawny, chicken-legged body. “Marco, please. Does it look like I play any sort of sport to you?”

Marco stopped walking. His eyes didn’t quite meet mine. 

“I thought you might have,” he said and started walking again.

“I’m surprised you can play hockey when you’re so blind,” I replied. “I’m hardly built for sports. I mean, look at this.” I grabbed his arm, forgetting again that this was only the second time we’d met, and lined his forearm up with mine. “Skinny, right? The other guys’d snap me like a twig.”

“You could play chess. It’s still technically a sport.”

I scoffed again and gave him a shove. “Yeah, right.”

He laughed and I found myself mentally saving the sound, ready to replay in my memory whenever I needed to hear it again. 

“You know, you’re a pretty fun guy, Jean,” he said, the laughter still sitting on the back of his tongue.

“That’s definitely the first time anyone’s told me  _ that _ .”

“You are, though. We should hang out some time.”

Just like that, we exchanged numbers – something that would have been impossible for Jeanne – before he clasped me on the shoulder, gave me one last smile and turned off the path on the way to the sports fields.

 

**

 

_ It is not two artists living in one studio, it is five. They are all very talented and all very bad at French. I guess they must be from the same place as Monsieur Bosch as he still seems able to converse with them at least most of the time. While Monsieur Bosch goes about the steady process of painting me, there are already two other artists camped in the recesses of the windows, searching out any natural light they can find. One is tall and thin with dark hair cut in a straight line across his forehead and he is introduced to me as Andrea. He draws on a scrap of paper with the most serious but most dispassionate face I have ever seen an artist make while working. The other, Felice, is a painter. He gives me a brilliant smile before focusing his eyes back on the canvas in front him. A third is standing square in the centre of the room. Apparently, they take turns to use the most open space.  _

_ Today it is Beppe’s turn. His name is Giuseppe but Monsieur Bosch and the other artists seem to never call him by it. He is a man that I have never seen before but, in the same way, may have seen a thousand times. With average height and colouring, dark hair and a face that is neither beautiful nor ugly, he is almost the very definition of the everyday man. Yet, even while I quickly sum up Beppe’s character as plain and boring, I am being proven wrong. For, while he may be the representation of the everyday man physically, his talent with stone is beyond amazing. He stands in the centre of the room, frowning in concentration, and slowly chipping away at the lump of mineral before him until a wing appears, then a beak. It will be a bird in full flight, I know it will, and the detail on each individual feather of its wings is incredible. _

_ The clay sculptor from my first day appears again, still slick to the elbows in grime. Monsieur Bosch introduces him as Natale, a friend from a land near his country. I struggle with the name for a moment before Monsieur Bosch speaks again. _

_ “In French it would be... How do you say it? Noël?” _

_ I smile gratefully and curtsey towards the sculptor. I don’t hold out my hand for him to shake. I don’t want to touch his clay-hands. _

_ “Bonjour, Monsieur Noël. I am Jeanne Blumstein. Monsieur Bosch has hired me to work as his model,” I say politely but the sculptor doesn’t respond. He simply turns back to the painter and they exchange several words, though I understand nothing. _

_ “Perché non chiama lui con un nome francese?” says Noël with a look as if some has slipped something rotten into his supper. _

_ “E chi é ‘lui’, Natale? ‘Félix’? ‘André’? O, forse, vuol dire me?” replies Monsieur Bosch, his expression a little devilish with child-like mischief. _

_ I shift slightly on the floor, wondering if I should take up my pose once more. “Monsieur Bosch?” I say. _

_ He turns away from Noël with a smile. “Je suis désolé, Mademoiselle Blumstein, he does not mean to be rude. He is only a little stroppy. It has been a long day.” _

_ I give an understanding smile of my own and gesture back towards our own little corner of the room. “Should we begin again?” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Australian university system is made up of tutorials (or ‘tutes’) and lectures mostly. Lectures are what you’d expect from the word – they’re lectures. Tutes are normal classes, like the ones you might have in high school. Depending on what course you’re doing and which uni you’re doing it at, your tutes may or may not be optional. My uni follows the non-compulsory model but it’s still recommended you attend at least 80% of tutes or you’ll probably fail for lack of understanding the unit and getting crappy grades. Most unis, though, have compulsory tutes. The uni I’ve based Reiss U off has compulsory tutes. Then you have additional classes specialised for the unit of top of that. For example, for biology last semester we had laboratory classes; my sister takes ‘studio’ classes for one of her architecture units which are basically workshops where you make things. A lot of classes don’t have these specialised classes. I have none this semester since I dropped bio. As far as I’m aware, this system is nationwide.
> 
> I'm almost done with the next chapter so hopefully that's up soon :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When humidity comes to Trost, it always brings a storm with it. In this case, the storm is a party planned by Connie's hacking-genius little sister that no one really knew was happening...

When humidity comes to Trost, it always brings a storm with it. It starts in the morning, when the air feels heavy, and the tension increases steadily all day. Everyone seems just a little on edge as the electricity hangs in the air, waiting for the spark that will set it to flame. 

When I was in high school, my science teacher often stopped in the middle of the lesson, stuck his nose in the air and sniffed. He’s freeze for a moment before levelling his gaze back at the class and saying in his most dramatic voice, “There’s a storm a-brewing. There’ll be a fight today.” And, of course, he was right just regularly enough to say it wasn’t a coincidence. 

That feeling of rising tension in the air -- of each particle pulling tighter and tighter against another -- until it was stretched taut, waiting only for the string to be cut, supposedly shortened people’s tempers; or so that teacher had always said. And, while I didn’t agree with him about the fights, I’ve never managed to shake that image of people’s tempers being pulled tight like stretched cling wrap, ready to puncture and tear in every direction with the slightest pressure. I felt it was the best way to describe the build up to a storm in Trost.

Then come the afternoon, there’ll be that first crack and the sky will split in two. The rain is freezing compared to the still hot hair that it falls through. The temperature quickly falls but inside, out of the rain, everything feels sticky. The moisture in the air clings to my skin and the room feels too small. 

Connie and I lay on the living room floor of the dorm, staring at the ceiling. I have the feeling we both had work to do but listening to the rain on the crappy tin roof of the dorm building and feeling the sticky humidity on our skin sapped any sort of enthusiasm for learning we might have once had. 

“I could totally go for a nap right now,” said Connie.

“Don’t you have class in half an hour?” I replied.

Connie scoffed. “It’s just a lecture. I’ll listen to it online later.”

“No you won’t.”

“You’re right. I won’t. But it’s the thought that counts.”

The front door opened and someone’s back appeared in the doorway. They made a small sound of effort as they hauled through a cardboard box filled with some mystery-objects while simultaneously kicking a duffle bag over the threshold. 

He finally turned to find both Connie and I staring back at him. Armin blinked slowly with those big, blue eyes I’m sure my sister would kill for before he jumped back.

“Wah!” 

He dropped the mysterious box. Being able to see the contents didn’t make them any less mysterious. Some sort of measuring device?

“What are you guys doing down there?”

“Just chillin’,” Connie replied, sitting up.

“It’s cold and the carpet’s still mostly warm from the sun,” I said.

“It’s not cold!” said Connie.

“It is by Trost standards,” I replied.

Connie stood up and headed into the kitchenette. I heard the kettle start up from where I was still lying on the floor.

“So, where’d you go this time?” I heard his voice float over to where Armin was still scooping the maybe-measuring-devices back into their box. “It was a research trip, right?”

“Port Stephens. And it was more like a field trip. I was just helping out some researchers.”

“Oh yeah?” Connie prompted. 

I heard the kettle click off and the sound of him pouring water into a mug. It was probably coffee. The shitty instant kind. We were hardly in any sort of economic position to be fussy, after all. 

“Yeah,” continued Armin, “Tagging juvenile great whites and taking surveys and things. There’s a nursery down around Port Stephens, you know?”

“Sounds intense.” Connie slumped onto the couch and grabbed the TV remote.

Definitely coffee. I could smell it from where I lay. Black and strong, just as he always had it.

“Well, I’m not really… I mean, I’m just an undergrad student so I couldn’t really help a lot. Just taking notes and things.” He joined Connie on the couch.

“Yeah, but still,  _ sharks _ .”

I closed my eyes. The sound of the rain and my dorm-mates’ voices and the almost silent background chatter of the TV. The carpet was so warm beneath me even if it was itchy. Connie was right. I really could go for nap. 

“Bye the way, Connie, weren’t you having a party tonight? I hurried back so I didn’t arrive in the middle of it.” Armin’s voice cut through my thoughts.

“Huh?” I said, sitting up.

“You’re not? It was on facebook so I just thought…”

“Oh god...” Connie moaned as he whipped out his phone to double check. 

He groaned again and suddenly he was calling someone, standing up and walking into our room to take the call. 

Armin and I could just hear his half of the conversation through the door.

“Stella! What did I tell you about… Well, every time I change it, you just guess the new one! What do you mean, I’m predictable? Look you -- No, listen to me. You can’t keep doing this. It’s a breach of privacy. So I’m warning you… No, no, I won’t tell Mum. Stop crying. Jesus, Stella. You knew I was gonna get mad, why’d you do it?”

He went on for a few more minutes. Armin and I silently watched the TV. Some cooking show that Connie had been following. 

Finally, he emerged, looking a little like he’d lost the battle.

“Little sisters, right? She’s twelve and just found out uni parties are a thing. She’s also some sort of hacking genius.”

Armin held his neglected coffee mug out to him with a smile. “So what are you going to do?”

Connie took the drink and sipped it, grimaced and went to the kitchen to pour the cold thing down the sink. 

“Well, it’s probably too late to cancel now. And hey, when have I ever been known to refuse a party?”

“When your roommate threatens to kill you if you have one?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t kill me for having some people over and a bit of fun.”

_ Try me.  _

No, he was right. I was too tired to be killing anyone. 

I sighed. “What time does it start?”

Connie grinned, slapped me on the back and disappeared into our room. “Ten, so people’ll probably start getting here about ten-thirty.”

Armin gave me a hopeful smile. “How’s your endurance?” he asked.

 

**

 

_ “I have an exhibit!” Marco cries as I step through the door to his studio one morning. _

_ I am immediately spiralled through the doorway and across the room, barely managing to stay on my feet as he spins us both in a high speed waltz through the tiny flat. Felice is set up in a corner but barely gives us a cursory glance before nudging his paint pallet under the safety of his chair with his foot and going back to his work. _

_ “It is only small and it is not only my work and perhaps no one will come but it is a chance. A chance, cara mia, and I intend to make full use of it!” _

_ I laugh and he seems to suddenly come to his senses.  _

_ “Je suis désolé, Mademoiselle Blumstein. I-I was a little too excited,” he says sheepishly but I only laugh again. _

_ He smiles and it seems like nothing else matters. His exhibition could just be nailing his paintings to a wall in an alley and I’d still be happy for him, so long as he smiles like that. _

_ “Well, Monsieur Successful-Artist, what masterpiece are we adding to your exhibition today?” I ask with a smile and he bows his head to hide his own grin.  _

_ He leads me by the hand back onto my wooden box and I try to position myself in the same way as yesterday. He doesn’t say a word as he takes up his palette and drenches it in paint. He mixes the colours sometimes with his brush, sometimes with his fingers, sometimes not at all and I let the silence and the stillness fill me, emptying my mind in preparation for hours of standing perfectly still. _

_ “You will come, won’t you?” he says before I can achieve perfect stillness.  _

_ I open my eyes again so I can see his face as he sits on his stool, one foot on the ground, the other propped against the stool’s leg. He looks worried, as if I would ever say no to watching people fawn over pictures of me. _

_ “Perhaps,” I say, watching his face drop with an unidentifiable sense of satisfaction. “I may not have the time.” _

_ His eyes tell me he wants to say something but he only nods once and picks up his brush again. _

 

**

It was almost nine and Armin had showered and swept his luggage into his and Bert’s room. He was  currently hurrying around the tiny living room, unplugging the TV and hiding under his bed, saving all his books from the coffee table, picking up Connie’s clothes from where he’d thrown them in some sort of high-speed stripping off that I didn’t really want to know about, folding them, putting them in his room, and basically being the only responsible adult in our dorm -- despite being the youngest by far. 

I was lying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling at the stain overhanging my head and wondering just when exactly it had gotten there. 

Let’s be clear: I hate parties. 

I spent the last three years of my teenagehood trying to convince myself I didn’t; going out all night, getting far too drunk, making choices I wouldn’t remember in the morning. But, with the coming of my second decade of life and the sudden realisation that I wasn’t obliged to be young and reckless anymore… I guess I just accepted how much I didn’t like them. I’d much rather spend my time lying on the floor with my roommate, listening to the sound of the rain and ignoring how busy I was.

Ah. That was a point. 

My eyes flicked to my laptop, lying open and leaning against my hip. The screen had long gone dark but it had once shown a PDF, sections highlighted with a little orange triangle in the corner of each bright-yellow strip to let me know I’d made some note there. 

It was just one reading I’d been putting off all week. For Art History. I had work to do -- I was painfully aware that I did -- but somehow I just couldn’t muster the motivation to tear my eyes away from that stain on the ceiling. Looking at that laptop, half slid off my lap and leaning against my hip, just made me feel guilty.

I felt my phone buzz in my back pocket and shifted to pull it out. My laptop slid all the way off my hip and gave a dangerous sounding ‘clonk’ as it hit the wall. I ignored it.

**Hey, Jean! It’s Marco. I’ve cooked way too much risotto and I was just wondering if you’d help me eat some? If not, that’s fine. I’ll continue on my quest for hungry mouths to feed!**

I stared at the text for a second. What did he mean, ‘it’s Marco’? Of course it was Marco, I had his number, I was hardly not going to know who it was. This wasn’t even the first time he’d texted me. Why was he texting like an old man? And with perfect punctuation too…

I snorted a laugh and started typing out a reply.

_ sorry marco! my roommates having a party so i have to kind of be here to make sure he doesnt break anything. _

**A party? Wow, okay then :) But, Jean, do you really think anyone’s going to turn up in this weather? It’s still raining pretty hard…**

_ Pft! Thisll be gone in a minute. its just blowing through. _

**Well, if you say so… Have fun, then!**

I hesitated for barely a second.

_ actually marco…  _

_ do you wanna come? i dont know if i can survive this alone _

Marco didn’t reply for a long while. I left my phone lying on my chest so there was no chance I’d miss it vibrating and went back to staring at the ceiling. 

Finally, he answered.

**Sure! Let me just stick this risotto in some tupperware and I’ll be right over! :)**

Ten minutes later, he sent another message.

**Ah, Jean? Where’s Res? And what’s your room number?**

I laughed at that, sent him directions and a screenshot of google maps, and headed out into the living room to let Connie know there’d be an addition to his numbers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I'm drawing from my own uni... Res is what everyone calls Residence. Basically the student housing or 'dorms' as they're referred to here. I'm afraid I've only actually been to Res twice -- both times for parties. One was like Jean's dorm, basically just an apartment in an apartment complex that the uni owns, and the other was more of a typical dorm with shared bathrooms and common areas and the students' bedrooms actually tucked away in tiny single rooms.  
> So, what I'm saying is: I don't really know how this system works?  
> Like, why are there so many types? Are these the only two types? who decides who goes where? If you're in the apartment-type, are you just thrown in with strangers or do you have to apply knowing who your roommates will be?  
> Whatever, it's not really a big deal. This is a fictional world after all.  
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I'll try to be back soon-ish but uni's been hell-ish and it's only the end of week three... it'll only get worse from here.  
> Thanks so much for reading! -- Ocean.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party begins. Jean looks like he's in for a long night...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a lot of Australian references/slang in this chapter. You also get a slight insight into drinking culture in Australia. Yay fun, right? (note sarcasm). Anyway, here's some things that might need cultural explanation:  
> 1\. O-Week: This is orientation week at universities. I don't know if all unis in Aus use this abbreviation but both the unis in my city do so... I'm going to say it's a national thing...  
> 2\. King's Cup: This might be an international thing, I don't know. All I know is that it's a drinking game that's been played at almost every party I've ever been to. The cup in the centre is filled with bits from everyone's drinks throughout the game and the loser has to scull the whole thing.  
> 3\. Deso: 'Designated Driver'. You will often hear the phrase 'respect the deso'. The deso is your trip home; don't piss them off.  
> 4\. Goon: This is that really cheap but really disgusting cask wine that comes in a bag - Otherwise known as a goon-bag? Do they have this overseas? I really don't know. It's cheap cask wine that uni kids use to get drunk as fast as possible while spending as little as possible, let's go with that.  
> 5\. Medical degree: Just a little thing - most (if not all) unis in Aus only offer medicine as a postgraduate course. Meaning you have to have already graduated with one degree from any other Australian recognised university before you can do it.  
> 6\. The drinking song: This, I'm pretty sure, is an Australian thing, considering it has the words 'true blue' and 'piss pot' in it. True blue is like... ahhh... 'honest'? or 'a good person'? or 'very Australian'? Depends on the context. And piss pot is just someone who drinks a lot.I'll put the full song in the end notes but it's basically just what people sing when someone is sculling a drink. 
> 
> I hope that's everything. If there's something I've missed or something you don't understand, feel free to message me :)

_ I can hear voices in the living room. Papa’s friend has come for tea. Of course, that means I must remain out of the way as Papa tries to convince his friend to lend him more money. I am surprised he has any friends left. But, as I pass the living room door, I am so taken aback by the conversation that I stop and listen. _

_ “You are sure the location is safe?” says Papa’s friend. _

_ “Of course, Guy-François. I have checked it myself,” replies Papa. _

_ I lean closer against the living room door to make sure I hear everything. _

_ “Then... I will have no qualms loaning you the money.” _

_ I sigh. I should have known it was just about money. It always is. _

_ “Thank you,  _ mon ami _. I will repay you the moment the factory is running smoothly.” I tune back in. Perhaps it wasn’t  _ only  _ about money. _

_ “I trust you, Ensel,” says Papa’s friend. “I also trust this will be a good investment on my part.” _

_ “It will succeed, Guy-François. Do you not know me at all?” _

_ They both laugh and I am frozen in my hiding place with astonishment. _

 

**

 

Marco arrived almost exactly at ten. The rain really had blown through by then, leaving only that residual stickiness in the air. He’d traded in his flannie and torn jeans for a collared shirt and whole jeans. He was definitely the first one there. Other than us, the people who actually lived there, the dorm was empty. Although, Bert was out for the night. Apparently he was staying at Reiner’s -- that’s his fellow German international student friend. Armin had finally managed to hide anything breakable under beds or in cupboards until the living room was safe.

Marco knocked twice and then immediately opened the door without waiting for a response.

“Hello?” he called just as Connie and I stuck our head out of our room to see who it was.

His eyes met mine and he smiled, holding up two bottles of cider in his hand -- the fancy kind, the one with that long German-sounding name I can never remember. 

“I brought drinks!” he said.

Connie pushed passed me to welcome him

“Well, come on in then, Friend!” he said. “Jean why didn’t you tell me the guy was awesome when you said someone was coming?”

I rolled my eyes and sauntered out of the room. Connie was chatting away to Marco as he shoved the drinks into the fridge.

I caught a glimpse of a can in Marco’s pocket. Red and blue. Red Bull? 

I didn’t think too much about it. He could have been studying or something before he came, after all. 

I leant against the couch and Marco’s eyes caught the movement. He turned on me with raised eyebrows. I tapped two fingers to my temple in a greeting salute and Marco mimicked it before turning back to Connie, who was still talking about the last party he’d been to during O-Week when he’d been so drunk he woke up in the host’s driveway at four in the afternoon after everyone else had gone home.

The sound of Armin laughing came from behind the closed door to his and Bert’s room. The boy followed the sound soon after, on the phone and still smiling. 

“Seriously, I don’t understand how you could get lost? It’s literally one bus stop from uni. Oh, god, no! That’s the complete wrong direction. You have to get on on the  _ uni  _ side of the street otherwise -- No, no, I’ll come and get you. Stay right there. Just give me a bit.”

He noticed Marco and gave a little wave, mouthing the words ‘Oh, hi!’ before he started rummaging through his pockets and the couch cushions looking for something, the phone never leaving his ear.  Occasionally he’d give a slight laugh or a ‘hmm’ or an ‘oh, really?’ but otherwise he stayed silent as his brows knit together and the lost thing stayed lost.

“Connie, Jean heave you guys seen my keys?” he whispered, his hand over the phone’s mic.

I shook my head and Connie cracked open a beer with a soft hiss. “Bathroom,” was all he said and Armin was off. 

A  minute later and he was out the door, keys in hand, still on the phone to the mystery person. 

“What was that about?” Connie asked, opening a packet of peanuts and shoving a handful into his mouth.

“I’m going to guess, friends of his? For the party?” said Marco and Connie nodded sagely before his own phone rang. 

“‘scuse me,” he muttered before shutting himself in our room. I could just make out his, “Hello?” as the door closed.

Marco and I looked at each other in the silence that followed.

“Wow,” said Marco. 

“Yeah, my dorm-mates...” I replied. “I suppose I should do introductions, huh?” 

Marco shrugged as if to say, ‘if you want to.’

“Okay, so he probably introduced himself already but the guy with the crew cut and propensity to give too many personal details is Connie Springer. We’ve shared a room since this time last year when I discovered the other side of Trost is still too far to take the bus every morning.  And the blonde guy on the phone who’d lost his keys is Armin Arlert -- Bert’s roommate. Bert, of course, you already know.” I stopped for a second. “How do you know Bert, by the way? He’s a second year undergrad student and you’re a first year postgrad student… is it some sort of secret society that I can’t know about?”

Marco laughed. “No! I just showed him around a couple of times.”

“What and you became friends just from that?” I had never thought giving directions to be the most bonding of experiences.

“Well, beginning of last year, ootsar managed to rope me into volunteering for them --”

“Wait, Marco. Ootsar? What the fuck is ootsar?”

“University of Trost Student Association. Ootsar.”

“Oh, UTSA. Okay, go on?”

“Right, well… Basically it was just a volunteering program where I’d be buddied with an international student for O-Week and show them around, help them enrol, help with any language barriers and all that. And since I’d done one year of German a thousand years ago in high school, that qualified me as Bert’s buddy. We just kept hanging out after O-Week was over.” He shrugged. “It’s not really exciting.”

“More exciting than how I met him. I just turned up and he was already living here.”

Marco laughed again just as Connie reappeared from our room. 

“Well,” said Connie, rubbing his hands together. “Looks like it’s all systems go, full speed ahead! We’re all set.”

“Who was that on the phone?” I asked warily.

Connie shrugged. “Just some guy I know…”

 

**

 

People started arriving in earnest at about eleven. By then Connie’d had four beers already and was by far the loudest of them all. Armin had accidently hidden the ipod dock in his effort to party-proof the living room but Connie dug it out from Bert’s sock drawer and stuck his phone in it. The whole dorm (and probably next door too) was filled with Connie’s very mainstream music. 

I promise, I have nothing against mainstream music. I’m not one of those people. Just maybe not at that volume. 

To be honest, I didn’t know anyone. It had been an open invitation on facebook but it still ended up being mostly Connie’s friends (thankfully) so he was happy. I could see him tucked away in the kitchenette, sitting on the bench and surrounded by people, his arms draped around some girl who looked vaguely familiar. 

Marco had found someone he knew too and left with nothing more than a, “I’ll be right back.” And bloody Armin still wasn’t back from picking up his mystery guest. So I sat on top of the heater that hadn’t been used for half a year, slowly nursing my drink and waiting for something to happen.

I always found myself building these parties up far too much in my head. I went in to them every time expecting them to be something out of an American teen movie -- which, of course, they weren’t. The music was loud, for sure, and there were probably too many people in the living room, given it’s size, but there were no fights, no dramatic break-ups or hook ups. Everyone just sort of separated into their little groups with an armload of drinks to chat. Still, the night was young. Who was to say that I wouldn’t see my dramatic American teen movie scene yet?

Suddenly, Armin was there, as if he’d been there all along. Also, I could see Marco returning from talking to that tiny blonde girl. Was this the beginning? 

No. Marco simply can back and tapped me on the shoulder in greeting. I nodded to him in reply. The music was too loud for unnecessary words. I hadn’t seen Marco drink anything all night but that didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t like I was watching him. All the time… 

“Jean!” Armin’s voice called my name from across the room.

Half a dozen faces turned to him in surprise but quickly went back to whatever they were talking about. Probably uni, given the time in the semester. 

Armin pushed his way through a group of people sprawled over the couch and on the ground with soft utterings of, “Excuse me, sorry, excuse me…”

It was only when he reached me that I realised he had someone’s wrist trapped in his hand. 

The newcomer looked half-surly, half-excited and kept glancing around the room as if anxious to get away from Armin and join one of the little packs that had formed throughout our living space. It was only when Armin gave a tug on his hand and he turned to face me that I saw his eyes.

“Noël?” I recognised him instantly.

“Huh?” he replied, the sound all nasal and screaming confrontation.

Armin let go of Noël’s hand. “Be nice,” he whispered to the grumpy sculptor from 19th century Paris and I only just caught it over the sound of the music. “Jean, this is a friend from my hometown, Eren. Eren, this is my dorm-mate Jean and his friend Marco.”

Marco gave a friendly wave. I just stared.

Of course. I wasn’t Jeanne. Marco’s surname wasn’t Bosch. So Noël wouldn’t be Noël, either. 

The realisation didn’t make me like the guy any more than I would without it, though.

“Yeah, hi,” said Eren. “But now…” he paused for dramatic effect and I rolled my eyes. “Who’s up for King’s?” He shouted the question to the room at large and got a warm enough response that he set off to find a pack of cards.

I sighed. 

Armin gave me a sympathetic smile. “I swear, he’s a really nice guy. Loyal and kind and he looks out for his friends. He’s just… bad with first impressions. Especially when his mind is elsewhere.”

“It’s fine, Armin, really. Don’t apologise for someone else. But I might sit out King’s if I can?”

Armin laughed. “I doubt I’ll be so lucky.” He turned to look at the group gathering around the coffee table and placing the biggest cup they could find in the centre of the fan of cards. “I really don’t like this game. I always lose.”

“Well, at least you don’t have to walk home drunk?”

“I suppose there is that…” said Armin and turned away to find a place on the couch before there were none left.

I looked at Marco out of the corner of my eye. He seemed in awe of the sight before him. 

I tried not to laugh but a smirk found its way onto my face instead. 

“So what about you, Marco? Up for King’s?” I asked him.

“I’ve never played.” His voice sounded a little far away.

The awe-struck look suddenly made sense. 

“What? You’ve never played King’s Cup? Never?” I grabbed him by the arm, my shock only half faked. “Marco, you have been to a party before, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course! Just… never played King’s Cup. I don’t know the rules.”

“Right,” I said. “We’re playing. I don’t particularly like this game but it’s an essential part of the party experience.”

“Huh? Wha-- Jean?” Marco spluttered as I dragged him over to the game. 

Connie saw us coming and held up a hand. 

“Wait, wait, wait right there, Jeannie-boy!” he called.

“What? Are there too many people already?” I replied.

It was a big game, probably about fifteen people, but it wasn’t impossible.

“No, no. It’s just that Marco can’t play.”

“What?”

“Gotta respect the deso, Jean.”

I turned to Marco. “You drove?”

“Well, my house is pretty far so… yeah. I had to,” said Marco. “Is this a drinking game?”

I looked between Marco and the giant cup in the centre of a pile of cards incredulously. “Really? Marco, we’re uni students. We’re stressed and reckless. And this is a shitty, low-cost party. Of course this is a drinking game.”

“Oh.” That was all he said.

I turned to Connie again. “He could play with water?”

“And what if he gets the King’s Cup? Unless you’re volunteering to be his drinker if that happens?”

I grimaced. Half a litre of a mix of goon, beer, cider and spirits was not something I had any great desire to drink.

“W-we’ll just watch this round, then. Is that okay, Marco?”

Marco just shrugged and squeezed in between Armin and some girl with a brown ponytail. I perched myself on the armrest of the couch. 

 

**

 

The game went slowly, as King’s always does when you’re not the one playing, and the group steadily became drunker until I couldn’t follow their jokes anymore. I’d gotten up three times already. Once to get another drink, once to go pee and once to get Connie a drink after he threatened to have a lightsaber battle in our room again if I didn’t. 

Marco seemed to be losing interest in the game as well. If I was any judge, he was getting tired -- tired of drunkards and just tired from lack of sleep. He finally cracked open that can of Red Bull that had been in his pocket all night and scooted back from the game to sip at it. I slid off the couch armrest to join him on the floor and we sat there for a while in silence. 

The playlist had come to an end by then but Connie was too absorbed in the game to put something else on. So the dorm was mostly quiet other than the occasional cries of ‘Never have I ever... driven a tractor while naked -- God damn it, Sash! You set me up!’ and the like.

The Red Bull wasn’t helping and Marco’s head was dipping lower and lower onto his chest. 

“You okay, Marco?” I asked and he nodded sleepily in reply. “Don’t you have to drive home tonight? You can’t go to sleep.”

Marco looked up at me from where his head rested on his knees with half-lidded eyes. “But I wanna sleep,” he drawled. 

Something inside me twisted at his sleepy words and  _ that look  _ on his face.

“Do you want me to talk to you so you don’t fall asleep?” I asked and he nodded again.

So I talked. I talked about last year and doing that Bachelor of Business and Commerce that had never quite felt right. I talked about the hellish summer where I’d changed to Arts. I talked about my family -- about my mum and my dad and my older sister. I talked about living in the dorm.

At some point Marco had scootched closer and settled his head on my knees instead of his own. And at some point he had started to talk about himself. How he was in his first year of medicine. How he’d done a Bachelor of Science for undergrad. How he lived in a sharehouse a couple of blocks north of uni with some friends. His voice came softly, sleepily and his throat cracked when it fell asleep and dipped too low but it was steady and soon even I was starting to feel sleepy.

Until the cheer went up from the game beside us. ‘ _ Here’s to Armin, he’s true blue! He’s a piss pot through and through!’ _ started being sung so loudly it ricocheted through the dorm. 

Poor Armin. He’d lost again.

Marco shot up from my knees, eyes wide, and looked around like a startled rabbit.

At least he’d woken up, I thought.

Connie held the now-empty King’s Cup in the air as Armin staggered to the bathroom to throw up. “Another game!” he shouted and the group on the couch and spilled onto the floor cheered. 

It was going to be a long night.

 

**

 

_ There are not many people at the exhibition. I knew it would be small. Still there are enough people – and enough of them not shaking their heads – when I walk into the tiny gallery that I think Marco can call it a success. He sees me the moment I step through the doors. He is talking with a bald, fat man who is unmistakably an art dealer but immediately waves away the man’s conversation to come and greet me. _

_ “You found time?” he asks. _

_ I ignore his smug smile. “What are you doing? Weren’t you about to make a deal?” _

_ “Yes, well... I can’t have you alone in a crowd of filthy men,” he replies. _

_ I scoff but suddenly realise I am the only woman there. Perhaps it would have been better not to come.  _

_ “Come, I will make the introductions,” says Marco as he loops his arm through mine and leads us both back to the art dealer. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, the full drinking song is:  
> Here's to [insert friend's name here] he/she's true blue  
> he/she's a piss pot through and through  
> he/she's a bastard, so they say  
> he/she tried to go to heaven but he/she went the other way  
> he/she went down, down, down, down....  
> [and 'down' is repeated until the drink is finished. I know. Classy, right?]
> 
> I think that's about all. This was a much longer chapter, huh? But it had some rather important stuff in it. I think we can truly move into the plot now :) Yay! No more introductions! You might have also noticed that I put up the estimated number of chapters. I kind of did a layout of what each chapter had to contain and ended up with 20 before I ran out of plot. So, I think there'll be at least 20, if not more. Sometimes things drag on, after all.  
> Thanks so much for reading, as always. Don't be afraid to leave a comment or message me if something doesn't make sense or you need clarification. I'm also on tumblr as [whereimnotme](http://whereimnotme.tumblr.com/) so come see me there too :)  
> See you soon, hopefully!
> 
> Ocean.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean wakes up the morning after the party, not remembering anything past midnight the night before. Apparently it involved marmosets and cat videos but, then again, he only has Marco's word for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What was I saying about not being back for a while? Tbh though I did have most of this chapter already written, it was just still in bits. And my motivation to write this research proposal for uni is at an all time low... So I'm back!

I woke to the sight of cork floors, a Mars Bar wrapper under a sofa and the feeling of a splitting headache. My mouth tasted disgusting and… I really hope that wasn’t me I could smell. 

I blinked slowly, piecing the night before back together in my mind, but I drew a blank after about midnight. From somewhere behind me, a soft breath rose and fell in sleep but I didn’t want to move yet and see who it was.

Wait, a moment. The dorm didn’t have cork floors; it was all carpet. 

I sat up quickly, then, ignoring the sudden rush of nausea that came with it. Wherever I was, it was definitely not 12D05. In fact, I doubted it was part of any of the dorms. 

The room was small and mismatched like a patchwork of whatever happened to be cheapest at the time. An old, navy blue, corduroy sofa, tearing at the seams and a wonky, pine wood table were the two main features of the room. A TV sat in one corner -- an old, boxy, analog one. I couldn’t see a set top box so chances were it didn’t actually do anything anymore. I’d been sleeping on the floor, a small puddle of drool marked where my head had lain. My body was stiff all over and I’m pretty sure my ribs had bruised. 

The sleeping breaths -- so rhythmical and even that I had forgotten they were there -- hitched and I suddenly remembered I wasn’t alone in this strange new room. 

Cautiously, I peeked over the back of the sofa. There, slumped sideways against a wall, hidden from my previous view by the lump of tattered corduroy, slept Marco Bodt -- the man I’d always thought of as been a figment of my imagination. His hair had fallen into his eyes during the night, ruining that perfect 50/50 parting that always made him seem so in control. He was wearing a cardigan, something I didn’t remember from the night before, and it too had slipped from his body, revealing a freckled neck and and a hockey-muscle-defined collar bone. Surely that position couldn’t be comfortable. He was still sitting, almost, but his shoulders had turned a little and crumpled back on the rest of him so they could reach the floor and take some of the weight from his spine. He mumbled something and scrunched his nose in his sleep but quickly settled again. His freckles bunched up at the action, only to be smoothed out again with a hand sleeply rubbed over his face. 

I smiled at the sight. 

Then I caught myself. What was I doing? Staring at Marco sleeping like he was some puppy to be coddled and spoilt? I could feel that it was that same stupid sappy smile I’d seen a thousand times on my mother’s face every time she caught sight of a baby. And I was directing it at Marco? Really?

He sneezed. 

“Oooi, Marco? You awake?” I whispered.

He groaned in response and I took that to mean ‘yes’.

“Marco?” I whispered again.

“Nyot?” he mumbled.

“It’s morning. Where are we?”

That made him sit up.

He looked around the room in a panic before he slumped against the wall again, his eyes slipping to half-lid.

“What?” he said. “It’s just home. Don’t scare me like that, Jean.” He snapped up again. “Wait, Jean? What are you -- oh yeah, that’s right.”

It was quickly becoming obvious that Marco was one of those people who had absolutely no idea what was going on just after they wake up. He was asking questions and answering them himself faster that I could follow, his face switching from blind panic to sleepy acceptance and back again each time. 

“Marco,” I said and he blinked up at me. He’d forgotten who I was again.    
“How did I get here?”

Marco rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and slowly pushed himself to his feet. It was a multi-step process that threatened to fall behind schedule at any moment; first to his knees, then to one foot, then falling back to the ground, one foot forward, pulling his weight onto it with his arms stretched forward, the other foot underneath, bum in the air, creaking to an upright position. 

“What are you talking about? You don’t remember?” he said, rubbing at his eyes again and stretching out his neck as if he hadn’t just been behaving like a newborn fawn. 

“Evidently,” I replied. 

He gave me a sleepy smile and headed out of the room. I followed like a lost puppy. There was no other choice, really.

Beyond the archway out of the living room was a hall and, directly on the other side of that, was another archway leading into a kitchen. A real kitchen. Not the crappy little kitchenette from the dorm. 

“You started complaining at about one,” said Marco, filling the kettle with water from the tap. “You were tired and everyone was too loud and you wanted to sleep.”

I pulled myself up onto the bench. “Really?” I said with a grimace. “Sorry about that. It must have been annoying.”

Marco gave me a saint-like smile, as if I could shit in his fridge and he’d still forgive me. “It was fine, really. Kind of cute. Like a… oh what’s the name of that animal? A marmoset. You were cute like a marmoset, clingy and with its tufty little ears and high pitched squeak. Man, marmosets are cute.”

That was awfully specific. I had the feeling Marco had still yet to wake up completely. It seemed like he’d stopped talking about me about halfway through.

“Okay…” I said. “If you’re sure.”

He shook his head as if to loosen the image of tiny marmosets from his mind. “Yeah, but,” he said, “I have training this afternoon so I had to leave anyway and I was like, ‘if you want to sleep now, do you want to crash at my place?’” The kettle clicked off and he started to pour the water into the coffee plunger. “You did. But you still ended up demanding I watch cat videos on youtube with you until about three.”

“Oh,” I said.

Marco turned back from the plunger, leaving the grinds to infuse. He looked at me carefully for a moment. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was thinking or what sort of face I was making. I had an explanation for how I ended up sleeping on Marco’s floor but… I’d been really annoying and called cute for it (and been compared to a monkey). My head was still threatening to split in two and the smell of the coffee was making me want to puke so I couldn’t think of anything beyond that. 

Finally Marco nodded as if coming to a conclusion and walked passed me to the fridge, patting me twice on the shoulder as he went. My eyes followed him.

“Are you sure I wasn’t annoying?” I asked all in one breath.

Marco laughed. “Jean, relax. You were no worse than anyone who’s been drinking. Now my older brother and sister they --  _ they _ are annoying drunks…”

He kept talking as he pulled food out of the fridge -- eggs, parsley, cheese and cream -- and started making breakfast. He pause the story of his older brother (the unfortunately named, Hamlet) trying to hold up a seven-11 with a loaf of bread, threatening, ‘hand over the pie and no one gets hurt’, to ask me if I wanted any. I looked down at the omelette he was whisking in disgust. The very thought of food...

To be honest, I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to what he was saying. I caught the end of the story of Hamlet playing ‘stick ‘em up’ story (the clerk was kind enough to play along and held the pie oven for ransom until Marco could get there and apologise a thousand times) and that was about it. There were more stories. Of sisters and another brother, of his housemates and the hilarious adventures that alcohol had brought each of them. But I wasn’t listening. I was just watching Marco’s face as he talked. His eyes were so animate; moving first this way and then another, rolling at the particularly cringe-worthy moments of each story. They shone and even the scent of food in my hungover nostrils couldn’t urge me to move fractionally further away. He was so alive. How could I have ever doubted his existence? He was Marco and that was all that I needed. 

His eyes focused back on the pan in his hands. The omelette was ready and he flipped it onto a plate and headed back to the living room, breakfast in one hand, coffee in the other. He looked over his shoulder at me with eyebrows raised to check if I was following. 

I was. I felt like I’d lost the will to be anywhere he wasn’t.

He settled himself at the beat-up table. I could clearly make out the words ‘Paradoxically, the growing literature on unconscious processes has also’ where someone had pushed too hard with their pen while writing at the soft-wood table and carved it through. I traced the words absently with my fingertips as Marco finished his last story. His eyes laughed and I couldn’t help but join in, despite having missed what was so funny. 

“Ah! Don’t you have training this afternoon?” I asked, trying to return my mind back to functionality. 

“Oh, yeah!” said Marco, checking his watch. “Still heaps of time, though. We start at three.”

“Oh, good. Do you… like, play for UT or..?” I tried. I’d never heard of students being on sports scholarships in Australia, it seemed more like an American thing. Now that I thought about it, I’d never heard of the University of Trost even  _ having  _ any sports teams. 

“No, no not for UT. I play for a really tiny local club,” he replied. “Why? You interested in starting hockey? I can’t promise the other guys won’t snap you like a twig.” He laughed and I rolled my eyes at his stealing my own words.

“Marco, please. I have no desire to be killed in some team sport any time soon. I was just curious.”

“Of course you were.” He was still smiling. “I feel like I’ve made it so you can’t say you do want to play now. Now that I think about it, you should come watch one of our games!”

I didn’t know what to say. Should I tell him I knew as much about hockey as he did about King’s? Or that the only purpose I’d ever found for watching sport was that it put me to sleep in minutes? Probably not. But this was Marco. And, according to my still addled brain, wherever Marco went, I wanted to be there too. 

So I smiled and nodded. “Sure. You got some big tournament coming up or something?”

He blushed modestly and I felt my jaw fall open a little. “It’s not like it’s that big or anything but this is the first time in years we’ve had any sort of chance of getting the title.”

“I’ll be there,” I told him and he gave me the most amazing smile I have ever seen.

Marco smiles easily. Hell, he  _ laughs  _ easily, of course he smiles even easier. I could have told you that based on nothing more than five years of dreams. But this smile… was nothing like any of the others. It was the physical representation of everything I had ever loved about him. 

_ Love.  _

Did I really just use that word?

Oh shit, I really liked him. I don’t mean ‘shit’ in the way that a lot of people might use it in this sort of situation. It wasn’t the, ‘Oh shit, I’m attracted to another man, what the hell is wrong with me? I didn’t think this could even happen,’ sort of shit. It was more like the ‘Oh shit, this person is unbelievably perfect and they’ll never look at me twice no matter how much I’d like them to,’ sort of shit. 

It was perhaps the easiest anyone has ever accepted their own sexuality. Maybe it was because I knew we’d done it all before, in a way that was socially acceptable. Not that being anything other than 100% straight isn’t socially acceptable. It’s just that heterosexual relationships are more socially acceptable. I’m not saying that people don’t accept people who are gay or bi or any other possible combination out there. I’m just saying that it’s safer to be – 

Okay, maybe it was affecting me more than I first thought. I was just a little scared. But what other choice did I have? He was amazing. And I... well, I was me.

 

**

 

_ “So I thought we would go on an adventure today.”  _

_ I have barely put down my purse in the studio and Marco is already collapsing his easel and tightening the lids on his paints.  _

_ I sigh and pull the purse back into my chest. _

_ “Where would you have us go, Marco?” _

_ His head shoots up at his name and I suddenly realise it is the first time I have called him that aloud. I am sure I am blushing. He quickly turns back to his paints though, stubbornly ignoring the pink tinges at the tips of his own ears. _

_ “I am not sure yet. Out of Paris. Somewhere green.” His eyes seem so far away and I can’t help my frown. _

_ “Perhaps I should ask my father...” I say, half just to see his reaction. _

_ His head snaps back up again. “Eh? Perché? While you are here, you are mine, da vero? Why should you need to ask your father?” _

You are mine.

_ I try not to think about his wording. French is not his first language, I remind myself.  _

_ “Well, if we are to go outside Paris, we may not make it back come nightfall. I don’t think Papa would agree to me spending the night with a strange man.” _

_ “We have known each other nearly a year. I am hardly a strange man still,” he reasons and I really want to agree with him but I doubt my father will see it the same way. _

 

**

 

My sudden revelation was quickly followed by the revelation that I’d already slept through my only lecture of the day. So as soon as I returned to the dorm, I curled up in a corner of my bunk, turned the volume on my laptop up as loud as it would go and forced my eyes to not leave the screen.

Jean Kirschstein: running from his problems since 1995.

The lecturer wasn’t the usual one -- which was odd considering she was the unit convenor. Apparently, Petra was off on maternity leave and we’d have a replacement until the end of the semester. 

The new lecturer introduced himself as Mike Zacharius and then picked up exactly where Petra had left off the week before. It was always nice when you had a substitute who actually knew what they were doing. 

I squeezed every bit of my attention into that lecture, hammering words into OneNote on the other side of the split screen. But with how much attention I was paying to not thinking about  _ that thing _ that I’d just realised, I wasn’t really paying all much attention to anything. If was more: ‘The -- yes, I know what ‘the’ means (don’t think about it) -- symbolism -- got this one too, I am so good at this (don’t think about it) -- used -- okay, yes, go on (don’t think about it)…’ rather than any real knowledge of how each word fit together. Until the mantra that played on repeat in my head became true and I really did forget. At least for a little while.

“What is the narrative within this piece?” Mike was saying. “Does anyone know? Does anyone recognise the story being told here? Yes, You, what was that?” The student’s answer wasn’t caught on the microphone so I just sat there and listened to ten seconds or so of silence before the lecturer picked up again. This is why I needed to go to these lectures in person. “Midas? No, it’s not King Midas but that was a good guess. I can see where you’re coming from. Anyone else? No? It’s actually a story from the bible – the Old Testament – and some of you who know it decently well might kick yourselves when I tell you what it’s called.” The slide changed. “ _ Belshazzar’s Feast _ .”

A collective groan of, ‘Of course...’ rose up from the more biblically educated students in the lecture theatre, loud enough this time for the mic to register it.

“This is Rembrandt’s  _ Belshazzar’s Feast _ , painted in 1635 – a time when a great many more of you would have known the story. It was a time when to be educated meant being educated by the church and, with that, came an understanding of many – if not most – bible stories. Now –”

“It’s so hot!” Connie’s voice seeped through his blanket and I hit pause on Mike’s lecture. I hadn’t even realised he was there.

“What?” I said, trying to pretend I hadn’t just flinched at the unexpected company.

“I’m dying...”

“Have you tried taking off the blanket?” I asked.

“It’s already March. I should be able to lie here perfectly comfy under a blanket,” he replied.

“Connie, I think you mean: it’s  _ only  _ March. This is Trost.”

“Yeah, I know but it was never this hot back home. Not even in the middle of January.”

I scoffed as I shifted my laptop off my knees and rolled out of bed. The floor sounded an awful lot like it might just break if I ever did that again. “That’s because Tasmania is the England of the Southern Hemisphere,” I said, rummaging through my bag for my headphones.

“Nah, man, that’s New Zealand.” Connie finally caved and tossed the blanket onto the floor.

I considered what he’d said for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, fair enough. Tassie still has too many spiders. The worst that can happen to you in New Zealand is stepping on a Kiwi and impaling your foot on its beak. Or maybe having a wetter crawl into your bed. Those things are fucking creepy.”

“Doesn’t England have spiders? And, I think I’d rather not stab my foot with a Kiwi beak. That sounds insanely painful.”

I snorted a laugh and, now with headphones in hand, put my foot on the bar fridge tucked under the desk under my bunk to swing myself back into bed. “Yeah, sounds pretty bad actually. I suppose they must have a few spiders but it’s like, everyone’s always afraid to come to Australia because they think they’re going to get killed by a spider or a shark or a jellyfish or a crocodile or something. So I figured that they must not have any really bad spiders overseas – or, at least, not in the UK or US.”

“That reminds me of that thing I read somewhere. What was it again? ‘Being Australian is knowing that 100 things within a ten metre radius could kill you and being secretly proud of it’?”

I laughed again. “It’s being secretly proud of it part that really cements you as Australian.”

“Yeea, fuckin’ ‘straya, mate,” Connie concurred before adding, “This fan is bloody useless.”

 

**

 

_ The driver of the cart we stop does not look happy to see us. No matter how much Marco insists that he does not mind the destination, the frown does not shift even a fraction on the man’s face. He looks at Marco – happy eyes, friendly smile and the spattering of freckles over his face with an easel tucked under one arm and a paint stained satchel hanging from the other – and frowns even harder. Then he looks at me in the bright blue dress Marco had decided he wanted to paint, with my hair carefully placed and my chin proudly stuck in the air – and smiles.  _

_ Ah, the joys of a pretty face.  _

_ Finally, he nods wordlessly over his shoulder at the back of the cart and we both climb on. _

_ I sit in silence and watch the scenery pass. The last time I had been out of Paris was to visit Papa’s factory and I can’t even remember how many years it’s been since then. Fields next to fields next to fields. All full of people planting and harvesting and fixing things. I watch as a small group of women walk before the plough, pulling rocks the size of my skull out its path to try and save the blade. I watch as one man dozes beneath a tree, enjoying the weight off his shoulders for a moment. I watch as his wife finds him and have to hold back my laughter at the look of utter terror plastered across his face.  _

_ The sun is almost directly above us by the time Marco finally leans over to tap the driver on the shoulder to let us off. The driver sees us off with a wave and a tip of his hat, infinitely jollier than when we’d climbed aboard.  _

_ Still, even off the cart, Marco does not stop. He sets off into the woods, easel bouncing against his shoulder, and I can only stumble after him. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh. My. God. *bangs head on table* that invitation to hockey was supposed to go in the first chapter and I have been /trying/ ever since to fit it in but it just would. not. go!
> 
> Also: ohohohohohoho!!! It happened! Basically, in order for most of the plot to work, they have to get together relatively early so look forward to it.   
> Writing Marco is still really clunky and awkward. He just seems to be doing a lot of smiling and not much else... (and 'as if I could shit in his fridge and he'd still forgive me' -- WHAT THE HELL AM I WRITING HERE?)  
> Judging by this chapter and the last one, it seems like these are just going to keep getting longer, the further into this I get... Hopefully we don't end up with any crazy 15,000 word chapters like what happened a couple of times in my original novel (I should probs start working on that again, eh?).
> 
> Yeah, I hope you enjoyed it regardless of the clunkiness and the weirdness! Feel free to drop me a line if there's anything confusing. I'm always open to clarify things (unless I've left them specifically ambiguous for dramatic effect).   
> Till next time! -- Ocean.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco's game day arrives and Jean just wants to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so Australian things:  
> 1\. no. 1 thing that might need cultural explanation is 'esky'. Except I am so Australian I actually don't know what these are called overseas. In New Zealand they call them 'chilly bins'. I only know that because it's hilarious. Hang on, I'll google it.   
> "The term "esky" is commonly used in Australia to generically refer to portable coolers or ice boxes and is part of the Australian vernacular, in place of words like "cooler" or "cooler box"" -- Thanks Wikipedia.   
> Basically it's just a brand name that came to represent all of that product. Like how Americans call tissues Kleenex.   
> 2\. The word 'oval'. This might even just be an ACT thing... but they're basically just playing fields, often associated with a particular school or club. I played soccer at Warramanga Oval when I was little. My primary school had its own 'Lyons Oval'. It's just a big open field used to play sports.

Connie and I once decided that autumn must be the uni student of the seasons; it almost never knows what it’s doing; it’s often late and even then may be confused when it arrives; it’ll start something, take a break and then take ages to start again but will, eventually, come through with something surprisingly good -- so good that neither it nor the seasons around it are quite sure how it came about. Then we immediately decided not to think too much about the analogy. There were too many times when it didn’t quite work. But March in Trost, at the very least, was very uni-student-like in nature. 

The heat dragged on for some time until one day (probably two days after the deadline) autumn arrived in a rush. The wind picked up and the cold the sea accrued overnight could no longer be heated out by the sun during the day. When the sea begins to cool, the whole of Trost cools rapidly until, what seems like only a moment later, the streets are lined with orange leaved trees and Armin has dug his scarf out from his bottom drawer. 

I was helping him carry something up from his car the afternoon of Marco’s game day -- the same game I’d promised to be at and had spent every moment since freaking out about. It hadn’t started out as me helping Armin. It had started as me taking a shortcut through the carpark on the way back from the bus stop. But he caught me and… well, I have yet to meet anyone who can say no to Armin.

“But it’s amazing, Jean, you wouldn’t believe,” Armin was saying, hauling another box of bright orange flyers out of the boot of his hatchback that looked like it had been through more owners than that purple pen that kept turning up on the floor of the studio room. You could still see where someone had scratched the words ‘I’m such a dirty bitch’ on the boot door where it had once, presumably, been very muddy. No matter how much the subsequent owners had tried to scratch it out, the dull silver traces shone through the faded-to-yellow white paint.

“Scuba diving! Every day! Can you imagine? And then I could help track and tag endangered rhino to map populations and migrations and increase efficiency in protection programs. I could set up running water lines in remote villages or teach at a village school or recover poached animals or… I don’t even know. Like, there’s just so much to do! And I’m going to do it all, Jean. I’m going to do it all!” The flyers fluttered a little in their box as Armin struggled to continue gesturing even with his arms full.

I shifted my box onto one hip so I could reach up and close the boot. “And that’s why you signed up to be on yet another committee?” I asked dully. 

Armin shuffled the box in his arms so he could lock the car and then set off for Dorm Building 12. 

“Only for the next four months,” he said as if that made everything better. “Then the organising, the trip itself and the various reports will already be done and I can go on with my life, more experienced from the adventure.”

“Yeah, but Armin, you’re already on -- what is it? -- four committee things? Ahh, let’s think about this. There’s UTSA and this and that student Amnesty International thing and.... oh, that events council for the school of science and technology… Then there’s working for living expenses. Not to mention this insane degree you’re doing! Do you have a time-turner or something?”

“It’s a bachelor of environmental science with a major in marine biology,” Armin supplied. I made a face that clearly read, ‘see what I mean?’ and Armin ignored it. “But, Jean,” he continued, “none of these councils and committees are really very much work. I’ll be fine.”

I rolled my eyes just as we reached the lift. “I’m pretty sure  _ one  _ of those committees is enough to have most people gouging out their own eyes with a pointy stick.”

“You’re exaggerating. It’s just a couple of meetings, a couple of fundraisers. Nothing big.”

I just shook my head and the elevator doors pinged. 

Neither of us had a hand free so Armin went to put his box down to get out his keys. But I knew Connie was probably inside, Bert definitely was so I just headbutted the door twice and waited for someone to open it.

Bert did a moment later, head bent a little so he could see us passed the door frame. I wondered vaguely if doorways in Germany were taller or whether he had to duck through them even there.

“Thanks, man,” I said. “Can you take Armin’s? He looks like his arms might fall off.”

Armin Arlert may have been the most impressive person I know in terms of time management, grades, enjoyment of life and beautiful eyes (honestly, don’t judge me for that until you’ve seen them) but he was even scrawnier than I was and his fingers were trembling around the edges of his box of flyers. 

“I’m fine,” he huffed, putting his shoulder between Bert’s outstretched hands and his precious cardboard box. He staggered across the room and dropped the box onto the coffee table. Bert silently, dutifully held to door open for us both until we were through. I muttered a quiet thank you again.

“Speaking of fundraisers, though, I’m supposed to be leaving for one pretty soon,” said Armin.

I dropped my box next to his and stretched my fingers straight again.

Bert finally closed the door. “What are you raising money for?” he asked in barely accented English. 

“Oh! It’s this volunteering in Africa thing. Listen to this, Bertholdt, you’re not gonna believe it!” Armin started up again.

“Don’t even ask, Bert. He can go for hours,” I warned and flopped down on the couch, reaching for the remote.

Bert gave a half polite, half very awkward laugh and came to sit beside me. I could see him glance anxiously at Armin on the way in the reflection off the screen.

The TV was still on the 24 hour news channel from that morning. Because apparently the first thing Armin wants to do as soon as he wakes up is drench himself in all the horrible things that happened in the world over night. I quickly flicked through a few channels before finally settling on the French news. It was still news but I had an aural test the next week and I could do with the practice.

“This good with you?” I asked Bert next me.

“ _ Oui, je n'ai pas de problèmes avec cette émission, _ ” he said, making an ‘a-okay’ sign with one hand.

Of course he’s fucking fluent in French too. Bloody Europeans…

Armin said something about going to shower and I stacked the two boxes of flyers on top of each other so there was room on the coffee table for me to put my feet up. I lay back as far as I could on the couch and tried to concentrate just enough that I could register the meaning of the words without worrying about the refugee crisis in Europe.

Selfish, I know. 

Just then Connie came bursting out of our room. I’d been pretty sure he was there but he’d been unusually quiet for Connie. He wasn’t quiet then. He was making some sort of noise of distress, trying to pull himself into a jacket and picking up anything on a horizontal surface. Bert and I watched him in silence for a while, the woman speaking rapid French on the screen completely forgotten. He picked up one box of flyers and then the other, checking in a frenzy beneath each one.

“Jean would you move your fucking feet for a second?” he shouted at me and I whipped my feet back like they’d been on hot coals.

“Have you lost something, Conor?” asked Bert.

“Just my fucking phone! Argh and I’m late… Sash’s gonna chuck a fit if we aren’t there in time to get snacks before it starts.”

“D’you want me to ring it?” I asked.

“Would you?” He sounded a little desperate. Just how terrifying was this new girlfriend of his?

The phone was on silent but I could still feel it in my thighs. Connie must have heard it buzzing underneath Bert and me because in a moment he was shoving his hands under our arses and shouting, “Up! Up! Get up!” and we were flung in the air. Bert staggered away, clutching a couch cushion and muttering tiny apologies. 

“Got it!” screamed Connie, hoisting the device in the air. “‘kay, gotta go. I’ll see you lads later!”

“Wait, Connie!” I called after him.

He stopped in the doorway.

“What time are you getting back?”

“I dunno, man. Depends what happens, if you know what I mean…” 

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t fuck around, Springer. You’re on dinner duty tonight. Didn’t you check the board?” I pointed at the small whiteboard magnetted to the fridge where we’d vaguely set out a list of chores for each of us at the beginning of the year.

“Really, Jean? No one follows that thing, anyway. Come on, man. Have a heart!” Connie pleaded, shifting from one foot to another. I wondered again at the full terror that Alexandra Blouse must be. 

It was true we were pretty lazy about it but…

“I know. I know, it’s just that… well, you kind of haven’t really.... done anything? Since you got back here at the beginning of semester? It’s just about time that you helped out a bit.”

“Jean.” Connie looked at me like I was insane and, to be honest, I was beginning to feel like I might be with all the support I was not getting from Bert, standing bolt upright like a meerkat on lookout next to me, still clinging to the cushion. “Jean, Jean, Jean…” Connie walked towards me, shaking his head, and put one hand tenderly on my shoulder. “Let me enlighten you on a little secret about this place, Genie-Boy. I help out. I help out a tonne. I bring the fun. And if that isn’t the most fucking important part of dorm life than I don’t know what is!” 

Then he grinned, turned on his heel and raced out the door towards his scary girlfriend with a laugh.

I turned to Bert.

“Did he -- Did he seriously just say that? Is he a fucking moron?”

Bert opened his mouth to reply, eyes clearly panicked.

“No, don’t bother. I already knew he was…” I said and slunk off into my room to be alone.

I was reaching for my art book before I really even knew what I was doing. It’d just become habit – to draw when anything was remotely shitty. So I placed my pencil against the paper and drew before the image even formed in my mind. 

I didn’t think about what it was that was forming beneath my hands. At first it was just a line, a spiral, then I added another line and suddenly it was something that could just about be called a scribble. I added another line, layering one upon another, my hands leading me down a path before my mind could even realise what might be around the corner. By the time I recognised a chin and a nose, I also recognised who it was supposed to be. His eyes, sloping downwards barely noticeably at the corners and always so fucking happy despite taking all the shit the world could possibly throw at him. His nose turned up ever so slightly at the tip. And every freckle exactly where I remembered it –  _ as I’d dreamed it _ , because I still couldn’t admit how much the current version of this man occupied my thoughts. I wouldn’t allow myself to admit it. That was a one way ticket to soul crushing rejection. And I’d been running from that since before I could remember. 

I scrawled ‘Monsieur Bosch’ into the top-right corner, as flamboyant and overly ‘French’ as I could make it, before adding the date at the bottom and turning the page. I placed my pencil to the paper and started again. This time I started with a horizontal line, stretched all the way across the page. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it just then but I was willing to follow my hand as it showed me. 

I didn’t notice the time pass. I was in a world stained graphite grey, where everything was malleable, changeable and entirely in my control. So, when Armin finally opened the door sheepishly however many hours later, I barely even remembered why I had retreated from reality in the first place.

“Hey, Jean?” he said sheepishly. He’d probably heard the confrontation and was being overly cautious. 

“Ng?” I mumbled, not bothering to look up from the page. 

“I just realised: the thing I’m fundraising at is Marco’s game. Didn’t you mention going? Do you want a lift?”

I looked up then. “Shit. What’s the time?” 

“Ahh, just after 3:30,” he replied.

The game started at 4. It would take me five minutes to walk to the bus stop, the bus probably wouldn’t come for another ten, the ride is about twenty minutes… Yeah, I needed that lift.

There are downsides to leaving your car at your parents place. I just couldn’t afford the rent for both the room and a parking space. I didn’t have much choice. Besides, I shared it with Adrianne and she was hardly about to give it up.

“That… that would be appreciated.”

 

**

 

_ The light barely makes it through the trees and, when it does, it is stained green. I take up my position as directed next to the tiny stream that runs through the clearing and Marco begins to sketch. But he has barely made a scratch in his book when he shakes his head and packs it all up again. He hoists the easel back onto his shoulder and holds out his hand for me to hold as I follow him again. So, I stumble between the trees, hand in hand with my fussy painter, certain we are going in circles. The picturesque lighting and little dappled glades soon lose their charm in hours of tramping through the undergrowth. Then, sure enough, we come full circle back to the fields. The tiny stream from the woods has pooled into a lake and a handful of cows have stopped to drink.  _

_ It is far from green. Marco had said somewhere green. But it seems the yellow fields and muddy cows will do because, this time, when he sets me up in my pose and settles himself onto his stool he simply nods once and buries himself in sketching.  _

 

_ I think this is the longest session yet. I must have stood for four hours together by the side of that lake but whenever Marco surfaces from the canvas, it isn’t to notice the sun slipping through the sky or the way my legs are practically trembling, it is only to glance at my face again and then attach his nose to the canvas once more.  _

_ “Isn’t it getting late?” I speak up at last, my voice feeling creaky from lack of use. Marco seems to snap out of a trance. _

_ “ _ Dio mio... _ It is almost dark,” he murmurs. _

_ He begins to replace his pencils in their box and I take that as my ticket to freedom, letting my limbs relax and walking over to the easel. _

_ He’s barely started. For all that staring at the page, there is very little of anything there.  _

_ I just sigh and roll my shoulders to let out some of the stiffness. This was going to be a long project. _

 

**

 

We parked two blocks from the playing fields because every parking space closer was filled with parents coming to see their little ones bash each other up with sticks. And then Armin had me carrying things again. I was beginning to have the sneaking suspicion that was the real reason he’d offered me lift. So I walked the two blocks to the playing fields hauling a massive esky filled with sausages, trying not to complain too much.

Soon the sound of a chattering crowd, cheering and the crack of hockey sticks on hockey sticks filled the air. We rounded the corner and suddenly we were there. A large oval, carefully watered and maintained, probably mown every fortnight, was laid out before me. Separated into fields by crisp, freshly sprayed lines and covered in swarms of children. The kids raced up and down the field in packs, each just as desperate as the next to touch the ball and the jostling between them making the task impossible for all. Screaming and cheering and clash-clash-clash. 

I already wanted to leave. But I couldn’t. Marco was there and… well I hadn’t quite won over emotion just yet. 

The oval was dotted with marquees here and there where, what I assumed were, parents waited with water in plastic cups and red frogs. A clubhouse stood to one side, half on the oval and half in the very full carpark, with Trost North Coast Hockey Club painted across one brown brick wall in black, white and orange block letters. 

“Just put it down anywhere,” said Armin as we finally arrived at another, smaller, gross 70s-brick building. It was probably the amenities block. “We won’t actually start for a while yet.”

I nodded and dropped the esky onto a folding table with relief.

“Do you need help finding Marco’s game?” he asked.

I looked out over the oval at the dozens of games going on at once. I hadn’t even asked what field he’d be on. And I sure as hell wasn’t trawling through every one of those games to find his familiar face. 

“Honestly, I have no idea where he is,” I said.

Armin smiled and pointed at the field map over his shoulder. “Well,” he said, “looks like there are only two adult games going on at the moment and one of them is women's so… I’d say he was on field 12.”

I shook my head at him. “And where in this hell on Earth is field 12?” I gestured back at the packs of six year olds swarming up and down the litany of fields behind me.

Armin barely reacted, just turned back to the field map. 

“Let’s see…” he said. “This right here is six so… twelve is probably  _ that one  _ over there.” He pointed vaguely towards the other side of the oval. 

Helpful. 

“Armin? What are you doing here?” someone called behind me.

I turned to find Noël -- No, he was Eren now -- striding through a huddle of unenthusiastic parents who looked like they’d taken a bathroom break and then just never returned to their children’s games. 

I scowled. And so did he once he recognised me. 

“Oh for Christ’s sake…” he muttered but kept walking towards Armin.

Honestly, I have no idea what I could have done in the short span of time we’d known each other to provoke such a reaction. Maybe he was just a dick. That’s probably it.

Armin didn’t notice Eren’s scowl or, if he did, he didn’t comment on it. He just gave a radiant smile and waved. “Hey! We’re setting up a fundraiser for that volunteer work I was telling you about.”

“What, horse-face, too? I didn’t think he was the volunteering sort.”

It actually took me a full three seconds to realise he was talking about me. 

“What?” I said with as much venom as I could summon.

“No,” Armin hastily interrupted, “Jean came to watch his friend play. Marco, you remember from the party?”

Eren thought for a second. “Freckles… brown hair… nice guy. Yeah, I liked him.”

_ What, and you just hated me? _

“Where’s he playing?” Eren continued.

“Field 12,” said Armin.

“Oh, sweet. I’m meeting Mikasa at field 10. Her friend’s --” he paused for a second to think, “Actually,  _ are  _ they friends? Maybe rivals or frenemies… Who knows? But you know Annie Leonhardt, right?”

Armin nodded. “She’s in my molecular bio tute.”

“Well, she’s playing on field 10 and her game’s just about done. I’m supposed to drive her and Mikasa home.” He tossed his keys in the palm of his hand.

I’m pretty sure they had both forgotten I was there by that point.

“I’m gonna go,” I said warily, not quite willing to walk away without saying anything at all. “Marco’s game starts soon and I have a feeling it’ll take me a while to find where field 12 is in all this mess.”

“Let Eren take you!” said Armin. “He’ll know where it is, won’t you?”

Wasn’t Eren the one who got on the wrong bus and ended up on the other side of town the night of Connie’s party? I wasn’t sure I trusted his sense of direction. 

“I don’t know…” I said.

“What? You don’t think I know where it is, or something?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“But you implied it.”

“What is your beef with me? I told you that’s not what I said.”

“You’re an arrogant twat. That’s my beef with you and you’re going to fucking follow me to field 12 so you don’t get lost like a little kid.”

I looked at Armin, smiling away like everyone was friends. Did he seriously expect me to just say, ‘yeah, alright,’ and follow after this dick?

“I’ll come too!” he said brightly. “It’s been a while since I saw Mikasa.”

I sighed in relief and the three of us set off across the oval, dodging flying balls and the occasional hockey stick that came at our heads. 

 

Mikasa was perhaps the most gorgeous girl I have ever seen. She was also Eren’s sister. Not by blood -- that was pretty obvious even at first glance -- but his sister none the less. 

She didn’t smile when she saw us. She just raised both her perfect eyebrows at us as if to say, ‘oh, you’re here already.’

“Did you get here, alright, Eren? No close calls this time?” she said aloud.

Eren rolled his eyes. “Really, Mikasa, you’re not my mum. Relax a little, would you?”

“I just thought you might have gotten lost again.”

Eren turned red and stole a glance over his shoulder to see if I was listening. I was. And I was loving hearing something he didn’t want me to.

“H-how many times do you think I’ve been here?” he tried to cover it up. “I’m not going to get lost.”

“You did last week,” she said.

“Shut up, Mikasa!”

I was trying not to laugh. 

“What’s the score?” Armin came to Eren’s rescue. 

“4-3,” replied Mikasa. “In Annie’s favour but that’s no surprise.”

“And how long still on the clock?” Eren had recovered by then. 

“About seven minutes.”

“Still a chance it could go to a draw, then,” said Armin gravely.

I was feeling lost again so I went to make a break for it. “I’ll just head over to Marco’s game, then. It’s the next field over, right?”

“Oh, wait, Jean!” Armin caught me by the arm but immediately let go again. “Mikasa, this is my dorm-mate, Jean. Jean: Eren’s sister and my childhood friend, Mikasa.”

“Hey,” I said awkwardly. I’m sure I was blushing and I hated that I could just see Eren’s smirking face behind Mikasa.

“Hi,” she replied.

“Can I go now?” I said.

“Sure,” said Armin. “I’ll come watch when I get my break. Oh! Speaking of, I should probably start setting up soon.”

Then he took off back across the field, jogging backward to shout his farewells. He stumbled and fell onto some team’s coach but was straight back on his feet, apologising to the woman and waving at Eren and Mikasa again.

I slipped away under his distraction and made my way to the next field over. 

Two teams -- one yellow and blue, the other black, white and orange -- were running laps up and down the field. They were still warming up. I took my place on the sidelines, staring enviously at the people who had thought to bring folding chairs, and waited for Marco to notice I was there. I didn’t even know which team was his. 

Both teams had finished their warm up and stretches, done a huddle and taken a drink before he finally saw me. With a wave at his team, Marco jogged across the field towards me, his face shining with sunscreen and sweat.

_ Don’t think about it. _ My mind reminded me and I thanked it for the reminder. 

“Jean!” he called. “You made it!” 

“Yee,” I squeaked before coughing once and trying again, “yeah.”

He was on the home team. The letters TNCHC were stitched in orange letters, outlined in black, onto the back of his white tank. 

_ Don’t think about it _ , my mind told me again just as I was about to swear that hockey shorts were my new god. 

“You alright? You look a bit sick,” he said.

“Yeah, fine.” I managed to sound nonchalant. “Just a bit car sick. Armin’s driving and all.”

Armin’s driving was perfect but Marco didn’t need to know that.

“Well, that’s okay then, I guess. You wanna meet my team?”

I didn’t know what to say. I mean: no, I did not want to meet his team but I couldn’t just say that to Marco. He was Marco. And he was wearing hockey shorts. 

“Uh -- I…” Luckily I was spared any response.

Just then, Eren and Mikasa appeared, along with a tiny blonde girl with a ferocious scowl. The three stopped beside us.

“Leonhardt,” said Marco tersely.

“Bodt,” the blonde girl replied the same. 

Then Marco’s coach shouted him over and he ran off with a smile and a wave, fluorescent runners flashing with every step.

“Wish me luck!” he shouted.

_ Goodluck.  _ I wish I said.

“What was that about?” said Eren.

“Ah… there is some rivalry between our clubs.” Annie’s accent was far stronger than Bert’s. So strong that even I could tell it was German. “And between both of our former clubs. And our junior clubs were international partners so we’ve known each other for a while.”

“Wasn’t your former club in Germany, though?” said Mikasa. 

“Bodt used to play for the second string under 18 Australian team. Did you not know that? And the junior hockey world is much smaller than the adult hockey world.”

Eren, Mikasa and I looked towards the field with new found awe. 

Marco had just gotten even further out of my reach.

It was time to give up, already. I was done. These feelings would go no where. Forget the whole sexuality problem -- it wouldn’t even come up at this rate. Forget what Jeanne and Monsieur Bosch had -- they’re dead and have been for a very long time. I was Jean Kirschstein:snarky and unduly arrogant, proud with nothing to be proud of, with average grades and no outstanding features. And he was Marco Bodt: med student, kindest person on the planet, killer smile, beautiful face and now played hockey for Australia. Even if he’d played second string, I don’t think I’d have made fifth string. 

It was over. I wouldn’t let emotion win anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid, I live for Eren with no sense of direction.
> 
> I apologise for Bert's French. It comes straight from google translate. I got as far as 'Oui' before I hit the limit on my awful French.  
> Oh, no... 4585 words and I didn't even get through everything. What is the world coming to? These chapters really are getting longer...   
> I wonder if I can put the next two chapters together? Since the chapter that would have been next chapter (if I'd managed to fit everything in /this/ chapter) doesn't seem to have a whole heap of content... Hmmmm... things to consider...
> 
> Anyway! I hope you liked it. I hope I'm writing everyone okay. I have extreme fear of writing Eren. Particularly from Jean's perspective it's hard not to make him flat. But I promise he'll get rounder from here on out! Thanks so much for reading, as always. Don't forget to drop me a line if you're confused or just want to chat (honestly, it's hard to stop talking in these ANs; talk to me about this story!). I'll see you all when I next hit a road block with this research proposal and want to procrastinate!  
> Ocean


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean tries to give up on Marco and the universe smacks him in the face with all the reasons that's impossible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, what the hell am I doing with my life? Have another chapter already.

The start whistle blew and the game began. I sat with Mikasa, Annie and Eren on the grass to watch the game I didn’t understand. My eyes followed the ball but my mind was elsewhere. I was trying to decide where I should go from there. 

I had to give up on Marco. That much was obvious. But it really wasn’t a conscious decision to fall for him in the first place. It had just happened. So how was I supposed to stop? I couldn’t just decide and have it happen. I knew the world didn’t work like that. 

It was probably best to replace him. God, that sounds heartless but it was really my only option. It was my only choice, the only thing I had any control over.

No it wasn’t. I was  being selfish again. I didn’t have to replace him, I just wanted to. In order to save my own heart I was willing to use someone else’s. Fuck, I’m one miserable bastard. 

“Come on, North Coast!” Eren shouted beside me and I suddenly remembered where I was. 

The opponent flicked the ball up the sideline, a North Coast player intercepted it and suddenly there were five players all jostling for the ball like some colour-coded pub brawl. The TNCHC captain, sporting his bright orange arm band, sprinted past, drawing the ball out of the mess like he was threading a needle. He didn’t keep it for long but sent it towards the midfield, his stick connecting with a crack. Marco received the pass with ease and ran with it, stick twitching and flipping until the hook at the end was nothing more than a spherical blur surrounding the ball. 

I caught a glimpse of Mikasa beside me out of the corner of my eye. Her face was impassive. She leant back on her hands and watched the game with a calm understanding. 

I swallowed. She seemed strong -- strong emotionally, I couldn’t say anything for her physical strength -- and maybe I was assuming in the selfish way I always do but… perhaps if it were her, she wouldn’t get hurt. 

I leant back next to her, leaning in probably just a little closer than I needed to in order to be heard over the sound of the game.

“How long is each half?” I asked.

“Thirty-five minutes,” she replied without looking away from the ball. 

Shit. What was I supposed to say next? She was so expressionless, making conversation seemed impossible. But, God was she pretty.

I looked back to the field. Marco had lifted his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face with the hem. I quickly looked away again. A group of kids, their games already done, were gathering at the edge of the field to watch the adults’ game in awe. I suppose it must be shocking to play your own game, running up and down the field with nothing more than the ball on your mind, and then turn around and see this complicated game of tactics. At least, I assumed there were tactics involved. There always are in team sports, right?

The ref blew his whistle and made some strange gesture. I took my chance again.

“What does that signal mean?” I asked Mikasa, leaning in once more.

“Someone touched the ball with their foot,” she replied.

“Oh, so you can’t do that. I suppose it’s like a handball in soccer, right?”

She turned to look at me at last. “Are you going to watch the game or not?”

Right. Of course. There goes that plan.

I turned back to the game, actually making an effort to follow it then.

There was a mesh of sticks, each one indistinguishable from another to my untrained eyes. The ball must have hit something, though, because suddenly it ricocheted high into the air with a clash. The players in the melee stepped back to watch where it would fall. 

It fell and a TNCHC player bounced it once -- adjusted his grip -- bounced it twice on his stick and then flicked it up, over the heads of the others. Straight to Marco.

Like there was a miniature black-hole at the end of his stick, Marco sucked the ball out of the sky and then he was running.

He took fifteen steps before the horde was on his tail; one on his left, steering him -- forcing his path -- and another on the right, flicking out a stick every now and then to try and nab the ball.

Marco’s eyes -- Marco’s amazing, animated eyes -- were up and frantic, searching for someone to receive the pass. This was why I didn’t want to watch.

He stumbled.

The player in yellow beside him took the chance and scooped the ball out from his feet.

Marco reacted instantly, reaching after his lost prize. The yellow player, still with the ball, turned to make the pass. He lifted his stick --

\-- and caught Marco right in the jaw. 

I cried out.

I didn’t even realise I’d gone to move until I felt Mikasa’s pull on my arm.

“Leave it,” she said. “There are medics for a reason.”

I looked at her aghast, logic gone. Then I looked back at Marco, curled in a protective ball around his face. And emotion won. Emotion always won.

I managed not to run onto the field. I shook free of Mikasa’s hand and set off in a jog to the goal end of the field where a teammate was helping Marco hobble from the game.

I vaguely registered the TNCHC coach running away from the game to get the medic.

“Is he alright?” I finally couldn’t hold back.

His teammate looked up, surprised to find a stranger beside the goal. He waited until they’d stepped off the field before replying.

“He should be fine,” said the other guy in North Coast colours. 

Marco blinked hard, fingers still pressed to his jaw, and looked up at me. “Jean?” he said.

His teammate visibly relaxed. I wasn’t a total stranger, at least.

“Nothing’s broken,” he continued, “and he hasn’t lost any teeth. But we’ll get him checked for concussion just in case. Otherwise, he’ll just have a bloody painful bruise for the next week or so.”

“Thanks,” I said.

We stood there for about five seconds or so in silence, Marco still hanging limply from his teammate’s shoulder.

“Uhh…” said the teammate at last, “Do you wanna take him because…” He gestured back over his shoulder where play had resumed on the field. 

“Ahh, right,” I replied.

_ Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. _

My mind chanted on repeat as I slipped under Marco’s arm and took his weight on my scrawny shoulders. He was warm. Warm and sweaty but I somehow didn’t mind. 

“Thanks, Nac,” Marco mumbled. The teammate ducked out from the weight and gave a slight wave before he shot back out onto the field, picking up his stick where someone had chucked it to the side to get it out of the way.

Marco spat his mouth guard out into his hand. I tried not to notice the small pool of blood in it.

“You okay?” I asked.

Marco was still rubbing his jaw and shaking his head, blinking back the pain and probing along his gums with his tongue. He leaned on me pretty heavily but his eyes seemed clear, at least. Then again, I wasn’t a doctor. 

“Yeah, I think so,” he eventually replied. “That was pretty stupid of me, huh?”

“He hit you in the face with a hockey stick! In no way was that your fault.”

“Nah, I was leaning down. Came right into his swing zone. It was my mistake.”

I just frowned. 

The medic appeared at a jog, a first aid kit hanging from her shoulder. She helped me lower Marco to a sit, checked his pupils for signs of concussion, gave him the all clear and a bag of ice and then was off, back to the clubhouse where people knew where to find her. 

Marco’s coach came over. He was probably only a couple of years older than we were, South-East Asian with dark hair and smiling eyes despite the concern they still managed to show.

“You ‘right, Marc?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry about this, Luke,” Marco replied.

“Don’t worry about it. Just get some ice on that bruise. Let me know when you feel okay again. We might be able to get you back in this game, yet.”

“That would be great.”

The coach seemed to suddenly notice me still crouched beside his star midfielder. 

“This is my friend, Jean,” Marco supplied to Luke’s curious glances. “He’s a worry-wart. I’ll be fine.”

“Oi, Marco…” I warned.

Luke laughed. “Luke Siss,” he said, holding out a hand. “I’m the assistant coach for the Trost North Coast Titans.”

“Jean Kirschstein,” I replied, taking his hand.

The ref blew his whistle at something going on in the game behind us and Luke turned to look over his shoulder at the field. 

“Right,” he said, “I should be getting back. Make sure you ice. And come see me when you’re ready to play.”

“Right-O, Coach.” Marco laughed.

Marco and I sat, side by side, next to the TNCHC goal. He held the ice to his face, occasionally making some comment to his keeper. The keeper would laugh and reply shortly but he never took his eyes from the game. I just sat in silence. 

I couldn’t shake the thought that this was somehow my fault. 

It was karma or something. I’d been trying so hard to pretend that I didn’t feel anything that I’d had a reminder shoved in my face. If I hadn’t been faking indifference then would this have still happened to him? Shit. I’m so sorry, Marco. I should have been honest from the start.

It was illogical. Complete nonsense. But emotion still ruled over logic in my brain and the thoughts remained.

“You sure you’re fine?” I said at last.

Marco laughed again. And then winced at the pain. “I’m fine! Really, I’ve had worse. Besides, you heard what Luke said. I can probably still play even in this game.”

I looked at him.

“Give me five minutes, Jean, and I’ll be up and running again. You need to stop worrying, you’ll give yourself grey hairs.”

I gave him a shove and he grinned as wide as his bruised jaw would allow. 

Marco did play some of the second half, the purple-black bruise growing darker on his face with every minute that passed, but TNCHC still lost 3-2.

 

**

 

_ Sunlight on my closed eyelids and the gentle rocking of the cart beneath me.  _

Mmm... _ I hear the murmur my lips make as if it’s not my own. _

_ “Jeanne? Are you awake?” _

_ I barely hear the voice through the fogginess of sleep but I know who’s there. That soft accent I’d come to love over the last year and a half. _

_ I’m lying in his lap, I realise, but rather than sitting up like I should, I reach up with my eyes still closed, fingers searching for his face.  _

_ “ _ Cosa fai, cara mia? Svegliati, Jeanne, non abbiamo tutto il giorno. Siamo quasi al lago _ ,” he says softly but I keep searching blindly until my fingertips brush gently across the edge of his jaw, prickly with the stubble he never seems to have the time to shave off.  _

_ I let my eyes flitter open and his eyes are on me, dark and smiling even when he’s mad. _

_ “You know I only speak French,” I say. _

_ “And you know my French is terrible,” he replies, his accent tugging at the vowels. “Come on, we are here.” And with that, he pushes me off his lap with a gentle laugh and turns to tap the driver on the shoulder. We are getting off. _

 

**

 

I insisted Marco let me drive him home. He spent the entire time telling me he was fine and he probably was but if I’d just played a game of hockey and been hit in the face only to lose in the end, I’d want someone to drive me home. So I insisted. 

He led me to his beat up old pick-up and chucked me the keys. The medic had given him another bag of ice as soon as he stepped off the field and he held it to his face again as he chucked his kit into the back and climbed into the passenger seat. 

“So…” I said as we crawled back through town. “Annie tells me you played for Australia?”

“To be fair, I never actually played. I was on the bench and it was an under 18 team.” Marco scoffed, gesturing with his bag of ice. 

“You were still on a national team,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, well…”

“Why’d you give it up? I mean, now you could be playing for the… hockeyroos, or whatever their called.”

Marco laughed quietly. “The Hockeyroos is the women’s team. The men’s team is the Kookaburras.”

“Wait, there’s actually a team called the hockeyroos? That was supposed to be a joke,” I said.

Marco laughed less quietly. “You want to say congratulations, right? Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied. “So why did you give it up? Injury?”

“No, it wasn’t injury. It was just… I wanted to be a doctor. And I can’t study medicine and train more than fifteen hours a week at the same time. So I gave it up and switched to recreational because I couldn’t quite give it up completely.”

I shrugged and pulled away from the lights. “Fair enough. Everyone wants something different.”

Marco’s smile had a little devilishness in it. It was the same smile I’d seen on Monsieur Bosch’s face on a fair few occasions. He leant across from the passenger seat.

“D’you want me to teach you?” he said.

“Marco, how many times have we been through this?”

“Oh, come on! You’d be good!”

“At team sports? I don’t think so.”

“I’m sure you’d be good. Why do you think you wouldn’t be?”

I looked at him for a moment, just long enough for him to see the incredulous glint in my eye, before I turned back to the road.

“I’m selfish, Marco. Selfish and self-centred. Those aren’t good traits for team sports. You know it’s true.”

Marco was silent for a long while, so long that I glanced at him again. He was frowning.

“You’re not selfish, Jean. You’re kind.”

I did a double take, spluttering. “What? No. No, Marco. That’s probably the last word most people would use to describe me.”

“Well, then I’m not most people. Jean, what are you doing right now?”

“Driving?” I answered.

“You’re driving me home. You’re going out of your way to drive me home.”

“But you’re injured! It’s different.”

“The doctor gave me the all clear. You saw me play. I’m perfectly fine. It’s just a bruise. But you’re still driving me home. Why?”

I sighed as I pulled off the main road into Marco’s street. “I guess… I thought you might be tired.”

“See?”

“Yeah but… No, just no, Marco. You don’t -- I’m not. You’ll see, in time, that I’m not kind at all. You’ll see.”

“I doubt that.”

I just huffed and we left it at that. 

 

**

 

Beppe and Felice were sitting in Marco’s living room. Beppe was lounging on the corduroy couch, his macbook balanced on his knees and one hand in a packet of chips. He looked up at the sound of the door.

“Ng! Marco, you’re back. Did you win?” he asked, mouth still half-full of chips. 

Felice looked up from where he’d been sitting at the dining table, face down in a massive textbook.  

“Shit, what happened to your face?” he said.

“Just the usual. Stick to the jaw. Nothing big,” Marco replied. 

I was still standing there, frozen stiff at the sight of a sculptor from 19th century Paris owning a macbook. 

Marco put his hand on my shoulder and I jumped a little. “This is Jean, by the way,” he said.

“Your new boy?” asked Felice, yawning and standing up. 

I willed the blush away from my face.

“He’s just a friend,” said Marco quietly. 

“Of course he is,” Felice replied. 

Marco rolled his eyes. “Jean, this is my housemate, Farlan. Over there is Samuel.” He put his hand up as a screen between us and Beppe on the couch. “Just a warning, though, he hates being called Sam.” 

I wondered if that was from spending an entire lifetime being referred to by a nickname. 

“There’s one other person living here,” Marco continued. 

I was sure they would be Andrea but his next words put some doubt in my mind. 

“But she’s not here right now.” 

Then again, if I could change genders, so could anyone. 

“Where  _ is  _ Ymir?” Samuel spoke up from the couch.

“I’m pretty sure she’s on her way back from Sydney. She was still taking down her exhibition this morning when I texted her,” Farlan replied. 

Felice owned a phone. I blinked the strangeness away.

“Ymir’s doing her masters in visual art at UT right now but she still has shows elsewhere sometimes,” Marco told me. “In fact, we’re all doing postgrad at UT.”

“Medicine,” said Samuel with a wave.

“Psychology,” said Farlan.

“Right,” I said. “I’m doing visual art, too, but undergrad.”

“Oh, nice.”

“Cool.”

This meeting was getting very awkward very quickly. 

Thankfully, there was a loud clatter from the foyer.

“Shit. Fuck. God dammit!” a voice cried. “Hellooo?” it sang and I recognised it to be female. “Anyone home? Give me a hand with all this. There’s no way I’m fucking letting you make Christa carry it all!”

The three housemates in the living room rolled their eyes in sync. 

“We’ll be right back,” Marco told me. “Just find somewhere comfy to sit.”

“I can lend a hand,” I replied. The idea of sitting alone in Marco’s living room seemed far more uncomfortable. 

“See, I told you you were nice.” Marco smiled. 

I just scoffed again. 

Ymir was not Andrea. She was tall and very thin, with dark hair and mediterranean skin dotted with freckles. She held three large canvases, covered to protect them during transit, in one spindly arm and had a large, black portfolio bag slung over the other. 

“Who’s this?” she asked the moment she saw me.

“Marco’s new boy,” Samuel supplied as he took another couple of canvases from Ymir’s feet and disappeared back into the house. 

“I told you, he’s just a friend!” Marco shouted after him. 

Ymir raised her eyebrows in such a way that I was fairly certain sexuality wouldn’t be the impossible obstacle I’d thought it would be. Then she shrugged and pushed her portfolio bag into my arms.

“Well, not-Marco’s-new-boy, take this through to my room for me, would you?” she said before she turned and left the house again.

In the space through the open door, I could just make out the same tiny blonde girl Marco had been talking to at Connie’s party struggling up the driveway under the weight of a large box filled with small canvases. 

“Geez, Christa, what did I say?” said Ymir. “Take any but this one. It’s too heavy.”

“I’m not a child, Ymir!” a voice insisted from behind the box. 

“I know. I know, baby. You’re just too stubborn.”

Marco nudged me with his shoulder and I turned to find he’d picked up his own box of art supplies and was leading the way back through the house. 

I followed him numbly. 

 

To be honest, Marco’s housemates were alright. Farlan was quiet and serious and, though he never started the joke, he would follow it to the end, laughing all the while. Samuel was just as he’d been in the past: the very definition of ordinary with one stunningly amazing trait. Where once it had been his talent with marble, now it was his incredible memory. I watched him pull that standard stunt, memorising an entire pack of cards, three times before I could believe he wasn’t just tricking me. And Ymir… sure she was coarse and probably a bit ruder than she needed to be but she was so honest I had instant faith in her. She even invited me to her next show. Her girlfriend, Christa, while not technically a housemate, was like an angel sent to Earth until someone put a toe over her moral line. 

I found I got on with them better and faster than I did with most people. It’s probably the power of Marco. I’m a better person around him.

 

**

 

_ “I want you to marry me.” He says it like he’s just asking for the time. _

_ I look over at him, his face balanced on a closed fist, balanced an elbow, balanced on his knee, half hidden behind his easel. He’s paint splattered and red from the sun but even that can’t shake the gentle smile from his face. _

_ “Monsieur Bosch, do you understand what you have just said?” _

_ “ _ Bien sûr _!” Of course! He replies with that stupid lopsided smile he only pulls out when he knows he’s right. _

_ We’ve been painting for hours. Maybe he’s gone mad in the heat. _

_ I pull myself out of the pose I’d become stuck in and dip my hand into the lake beside me, flicking the water up and onto his face.  _

_ “ _ Alors _ , you are awake now, let me ask you again.” I fall back into the pose and plaster an expression of innocent shock onto my face. “Monsieur Bosch, do you understand what you have just said?” _

_ He stands up from his stool and pushes the easel aside. It totters for a moment before falling to the ground, paint seeping out over the grass from the palette he’d balanced in the canvas tray. _

_ “I’m serious, Jeanne,” he says, reaching for me. _

_ I take a step backward but his hands grasp both my elbows.  _

_ “Mar-” I start. _

_ “I want you to marry me, Jeanne.” His eyes hold me in place, unmoving.  _

Mon Dieu, he really  _ is  _ serious. 

_ “What do  _ you  _ want to do?” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yayy! Marco is slightly less clunky this chapter! But Armin's fallen kind of flat... Also these are my two favourite bits of flashback. They were originally supposed to go in different chapters but when I merged these two together they ended up in one.   
> I wasn't actually planning on making Marco a really good player. He was going to be a really average player who just really enjoyed the sport but then somehow that conversation with Annie happened last chapter and... well, it just ended up this way.   
> Can you guess the qualifications for being on Marco's team? Marco and Nac are on it; that's what you have to work with. And if Luke Siss is the assistant coach, who's the head coach? Speaking of Luke, though, I think this is the first time I've ever just flat out stated someone's ethnicity... hopefully it works okay.  
> That's it! I hope you're enjoying all these Ocean-is-procrastinating chapters. Hopefully I won't actually see you until mid-semester exams are over. Oh, god, I have that genetics exam tomorrow... Anyway! Enjoy! Let me know what you think :)  
> Ocean


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We take a dip back into introductions and characterisation. Hopefully the last dip for a while...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably the only thing that needs explanation this time would be The Esperance and the shark cull that went on there (actually, has it happened yet? Or is it still being planned? Eren would know) but it's pretty complicated so you're probably better off just googling it. I can tell you that The Esperance is a really huge bay-ish (more like a gulf?) area in Western Australia known for having a lot of sharks. I can tell you that the shark cull is a pointless endeavour based solely on revenge. But if you want more details you'll have to resort to good-ol' Google.

_ “No,” says Papa the second he sees Marco dressed nicely without a speck of paint on him for once.  _

_ “Monsieur Blumstein, Sir, if you would at least hear my argument,” Marco says, palms out to Papa in a sign of peace. _

_ “No amount of ‘Sir’ is going to get me to agree. I know what you’re here for, young man, and I shan’t hand her over.” _

_ Marco opens his mouth to argue further but I put my hand on his arm. He looks down at me and I shake my head. Papa’s brow has furrowed. We are already three rungs up the ladder to a beating. Marco has never seen Papa mad. If he had, he couldn’t be so unafraid.  _

_ Marco sighs and puts his hand over mine for a moment. Somehow, he understands. _

_ “I’ll come again, Monsieur Blumstein. I  _ will  _ speak with you,” he says, giving my fingers the lightest of squeezes before turning and marching back out the door. _

_ Papa glares at me in the silence Marco leaves behind. _

_ “A painter?” he spits and I try not to flinch at the venom in his voice. “A penniless painter with no ambitions for anything greater? A penniless painter whose work no one wants to buy? Just when the new factory is starting to make real profits, you want ruin  _ everything  _ by marrying a penniless painter?” His voice rises an octave with every repetition of ‘penniless painter’.  _

_ “He is a good man,” I try but Papa cuts me off.  _

_ “Good but poor, Jeanne. No, I will not give my consent.” _

_ “His paintings are amazing.” _

_ “That is your argument? He has never sold a single one, Jeanne. They cannot be ‘amazing’.” _

_ “I’m sure, in time-” _

_ “’In time’ will not be soon enough. I am telling you ‘no’, Jeanne. I am your father and you will obey me.” _

_ I’m trembling. He will beat me. He will beat me to within an inch of my life. Until my face and body are so broken Marco will not even want me anymore. Then what will have been the point of all this? Still, I don’t stop. _

_ “His father is wealthy.” It’s my trump card. _

_ Papa’s nose twitches. I am too far up the ladder to climb down now.  _

_ “Yet no one knows how he got his money. It could be gone tomorrow for all we know! Stop, Jeanne. You cannot win. I won’t have you going to that man’s house anymore.” His voice is calm, which is never a good sign, and I have to admit defeat. _

_ “At least let me see him...” I whimper, my last act of defiance. _

_ Papa just glares at me and reaches for his belt. _

 

**

 

I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised by it anymore. I’d met my fair share of 19th century Parisians again already. Still, scrolling through the minuscule amount of notes I managed to take during that lecture, I realised it was still getting to me. I was waiting for Marco in the little courtyard outside building three -- the applied science building, one I’d never really had a need for until I met Marco -- and still a little dazed at finding that Mike Zacharius, my sub lecturer for art history until the end of the semester, was the very same Guy-François that loaned Ensel Blumstein money to restart his factory over 150 years before.  

I should be used to it already. But clearly I wasn’t. 

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I shook any thoughts of poverty and poor hygiene in dodgy inner Paris apartments out of my mind.

**Sorry, the lab is running a little long. I’ll probably be late :(**

I sighed. Of course it was. Other than that first time we’d talked after Marco’s chem lab, the second time we’d ever  talked as Jean Kirschstein and Marco Bodt, his labs have always run late.

_ ill go ahead first and grab a coffee or something in the meantime then. connies probs already waiting. ill let him know. _

**Thanks! :) I’ll be out as soon as I can. Tell Connie ‘sorry’ from me, too.**

_ will do _

I tucked my laptop back into my bag and stood up from the low, rock wall, my neck giving a few good cracks as I stretched it out again after sitting staring down at the screen for so long.

My phone buzzed again. Connie’s contact flashed across my lock-screen over his short message.

I unlocked the phone to reply just as I set off for the tiny cafe, tucked into the little alley between the bank and the campus hairdresser, where Armin worked.

**tick-tock…**

_ what? _

**Time is a-wasting**

_ seriously connie. what the fuck? _

**Oh come on jean! You said 11:30 and it’s 11:35.**

**Where are you two?**

_ calm down. its just lunch. _

_ ill be there in a bit _

 

Connie was tapping an invisible watch on his wrist when I finally pushed open the dark wooden door to the little back-alley cafe.

I just rolled my eyes and pulled a chair over from another table so I could join him at the table against the window.

“Where’s Marco?” was the first thing he asked.

“Take a guess,” I replied.

“His lab ran long again, didn’t it?”

I just gave him a knowing look.

“They should just reschedule it to a 3.5 hour lab already,” he said.

“No kidding.”

In the three weeks or so that Connie, Marco and I had made a habit of invading Armin’s workplace for lunch on Wednesdays, the two of us had well gotten used to Marco’s time not being as free as he said it was. 

Armin finally noticed us and Connie shouted him down for some food. Armin nodded frantically, obviously frazzled but whether it was from working in hospitality all day, his four committees, his volunteering for research projects or his uni workload, I had no idea. Probably a combination of all of them. He’d pulled his long-ish blonde hair back into a bun, so I knew things were getting serious. He wouldn’t take it out again except for showers until mid-sems were over. 

It’s the business bun. For getting business done.

Marco arrived, out of breath like he’d run all the way from building three, just as Armin placed our food on the table. He gave a wink to Marco as he set down his usual chicken toasty and latte. 

“Thanks, Armin,” Marco puffed. “Sorry I’m late. The la-”

“We know, Marco. Sit down. Relax,” I interrupted.

“Thanks,” he said. 

The cafe was almost empty, as it usually was at that time. Every half an hour (as classes only ever finished on the hour or half-hour) there would be a sudden rush as students hurried to pick up their coffees between classes and, of course, there was the lunchtime rush but, other than that, Armin’s little back-alley cafe, tucked away between a hairdresser and a branch of the Commonwealth Bank, remained hidden and empty. 

Bert was there, though, tucked away in a corner as much as it’s possible to tuck someone as big as Bert into a corner, and he was with Reiner. The two of them conversing in high-speed German about something the rest of us were deemed unfit to hear. Or maybe it was just something we didn’t need to hear. 

Where Bert was big lengthways, Reiner was big sideways. He wasn’t fat, he was just built like a tank with the shoulders of two rugby players joined together and the abs of a body-builder. Please don’t worry about how I saw Reiner’s abs and start thinking of some convoluted and embarrassing plot where we ended up having to do something unspeakable together. Trost is on the coast. We have plenty of beaches; I’ve seen more abs than I could poke a stick at.

Marco waved at Bert and Bert waved back. They traded books -- some classical literature that I probably should have read but never have -- and Marco asked if he wanted to eat with us. Had they both just been carrying those around in case they ran into each other? Bert declined lunch as politely and quietly as he could and returned to his corner with Reiner. 

The remaining three of us chatted back and forth for a while. Connie had failed to hand in his biology practical report and so already knew he’d failed the unit despite us not even being half-way through the semester. Marco’s team had won their most recent game. I was thinking about maybe  acrylic for my mid-semester project. Armin came and leaned against the wall next to us for a while -- there were so few customers he wouldn’t be missed -- and joined in. 

And all the while, I was trying as hard as I could to forget that Marco was beautiful. That he was an incredibly talented sportsman. That he was brilliant. That he was kind. That I was a wreck in comparison. 

The bell gave a little chime over the door and Armin pushed off his wall to greet the guests, only to discover Eren and Mikasa slipping into the cafe.

I hurriedly turned back to our table and my pile of chips. 

Mikasa confused me. She wasn’t particularly hard to understand -- no, actually she  _ was  _ but that wasn’t why she confused me. Really, she was just as hard to understand as any other normal, multi-faceted person on the planet. She confused me because I wasn’t exactly sure what she did to me. I mean, I liked Marco. God did I like Marco. That was becoming more and more obvious with every day that passed. But every time my eyes caught sight of Mikasa, they tried to tell me I should be looking at her. 

Probably twenty years of thinking I was straight.

Eren didn’t confuse me. He was just as grating as ever with his stupid unshakable convictions and overconfidence. He pulled up a chair at our table without asking and Mikasa followed suit. Armin was called away into the kitchen and we were left with the task of entertaining his loud friend. 

“So, you gotta watch out for that swell after a storm. Sure, it looks good from the beach but surging waves are rubbish to ride and can just as easily smash you against the rocks or drag you out to sea.” 

Eren was talking about surfing. It seemed he shared Armin’s passion for the sea but he was distinctly lacking Armin’s overarching excitement. Where Armin would lose sight of his listener, often leaving them behind as the topic became more complicated, more fascinating, Eren’s words were slow and measured, calculated to draw people’s attention in. 

I wanted to be doing anything rather than sitting there listening to him. Honestly, I would have taken repeatedly smashing my head against a rock rather than sit there and have to acknowledge the fact that Eren Jaeger was impossibly charismatic. 

He’s a brilliant orator and a skilled storyteller and I really wanted to punch him. 

He’d moved on from surfing to sharks, from sharks to the shark cull in The Esperance, from the cull to politics. He just had to be so fucking knowledgeable about everything. Armin was right. He really was a good guy. And I hated him all the more for it.

_ I’m really going to punch him unless he shuts up right now. _

I looked away, determined to appear disinterested, and noticed Marco was just about the only other person in the room not drawn into Eren’s voice. Even Bert and Reiner had stopped their secretive German conversation and were leaning a little closer to Jaeger. 

Marco was texting, I realised, with a slight smile on his face. I leaned over to nudge him with my shoulder and, against my best instincts, spoke.

“Girlfriend?” I teased, wanting to kick myself the moment the words left my mouth.

Really, I was hurting no one but myself.

Thankfully, Marco chuckled quietly. 

“No,” he whispered so as not to disturb Eren’s voice (he had moved from politics to the nature of the human condition, the bastard), “my brother.”

“Hamlet?” I asked.

“Nah, the younger brother, Max.”

I nodded. “What’s he say?”

Marco laughed again. “He’s hopelessly lost on campus.”

I smirked. Max, Marco had told me, was a second year like I was so I couldn’t help feeling a sense of superiority at the fact that I had never gotten lost once.

“Maybe he should meet Jaeger, then. I think they’d get along,” I said and Marco laughed.

“I keep telling him to look for the giant numbers painted on the buildings so he can tell me where he is but he has no idea what I’m talking about. Just keeps going on about orange doors,” he said.

“Aren’t the doors on the childcare centre orange?” Armin said. He’d leaned over to listen in on our conversation. “And they wouldn’t have building numbers on a building that wasn’t technically part of the university.” 

“He’s wandered in on daycare, Marco. It’s all over,” I said.

“Oh, God. Gimme a bit, I know where the childcare centre is. Maybe I can still steer him back to safety before a staff member finds him, thinks he’s some sort of pervert, and calls the police.” Marco started intensely hammering a deluge of messages into his phone. 

I laughed.

Eren had come full circle back to the sea and was discussing the intricate details of the International Court hearing decision on Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean with Bert who had pulled his chair over to our table when I wasn’t looking.

Marco finally sighed with relief. I looked over at him and he turned his phone so I could see the selfie of his little brother standing in front of a sign reading ‘Library →’ and practically weeping in gratitude. 

I shook my head with a smile.

Max was very obviously Marco’s brother. I mean, he didn’t have Marco’s amazing, animated, shining dark eyes but that’s to be expected. They’re Marco’s. No one else could quite do them justice. But the shape of their eyes was the same -- turning down slightly at the corners -- and his nose turned up fractionally at the tip, just as Marco’s did. His face was a little rounder but his skin tone was the same, the freckles were the same. His hair was a fair deal longer and fell unbroken across his forehead rather than split in Marco’s characteristic 50/50 parting but it had the same dark waves, not quite curled but almost.

I suppose he was good looking, in a boyish, puppy-like way and I rolled my eyes at Marco to signal that I’d clearly seen the photo. 

He typed one last message into the phone and pocketed it.

“So, did you think about Ymir’s offer?” he asked me.

“Huh?”

“To come see her next exhibition?”

“Oh, right.” Yeah, I remembered. It was probably the grain of rice that tipped the scale over to me actually liking her. “To be honest, I thought it was just lip-service.”

Marco snorted. “Ymir doesn’t do lip-service.”

“Yeah, I probably should have seen that coming.”

“She was serious, Jean, and she has one coming up,” said Marco.

“When abouts? Because mid-sems are coming up and…” 

Why was I already making excuses? Didn’t I want to see her work? Was I afraid that I would have to go with Marco and fuck up royally?

“Then it’s fine. It’s in class-free break. After mid-sems. 9th and 10th of April. You free?”

I was clutching at straws. I really didn’t want to go and I couldn’t quite place why. So the words just slipped out.

“That’s the weekend after my birthday,” I said. “So I’ll probably have to go home for some big family thing…”

To be honest, I had no idea if there would be a family thing, big or not, and if there was, it would be on my actual birthday not the following weekend.

I swear, I’m usually more honest than this. It seems like I only ever lie to Marco.

“Then even more reason to go!” Marco’s eyes shone. “It’ll be a birthday treat. You can do your family thing Saturday and then we’ll go to Ymir’s exhibit Sunday. A birthday weekend.”

I’d run dry. All my excuses had run out. Or, more accurately, they’d shrivelled up and died in the brilliance of Marco’s last smile. I’d fallen into that useless, pliant state he sometimes managed to get me in. The one where I will follow him off the cliff’s edge before I ask where we’re going. 

Damn him and his amazing… everything. Fuck.

“Alright,” I gave in, “I’ll go. Where is this thing?”

Marco grinned and gave me an address somewhere in North Trost and I wrinkled my nose. I’m pretty sure I’d only ever been northside once before without driving straight through and out of town. I wasn’t going to be able to gloat over Max for long. Then again, what else was GPS for if not to help you find your way through the back-end of town?

I’d just have to suck it up and work on not doing anything that might pound whatever emotions I’d managed to build up over the years into dust. I was going to have to take precautions not to let Marco turn me into his own personal lemming.

Eren finally stopped talking. He stood up to take a piss, or something, and left me sitting awkwardly between Marco and Mikasa.

I steeled myself and went for it, dropping the ‘nothing can touch me’ mask onto my face.

“I really love your hair,” I told Mikasa who looked at me like she couldn’t quite believe I had dared speak to her. “It’s so… black.” 

Fuck. 

“Thank you,” she replied and turned back to whatever Connie was saying.

Make myself like Mikasa -- that had been the plan, the one I’d decided on and quickly screwed up at Marco’s game. It was a deeply flawed plan and I was only ever really half-committed to it, but it was the only one I had. Because there was no way in Hell I would ever be with Marco. That was the road to pain. And I planned to turn off it before I made it to the main-road. 

The problem was that I just wasn’t actually trying to give up on him. I kept telling myself to, kept telling myself I was. But I wasn’t. Not really. Because, really, I didn’t want  to give up. I wanted to believe there was some hope there. It was so unlike me to be this optimistic but I guess that shows just how badly I wanted it. How badly I wanted to be with him.

 

**

 

I sat on the short slope overlooking the playing fields with Marco. I still had a good half and hour to kill before that French tute and, for some reason, he’d decided it would be okay for him to not join in warm-up until his coach actually arrived. Marco’s team trained at UT because, no matter how much they insisted they weren’t affiliated with the uni, all but one player studied there and it was Luke’s alma mater. So we sat on the grassy slope and watched his team run laps and stretch without really talking. Occasionally, someone from the team would notice him and shout a greeting. Marco would just wave and shout one back without even moving to get up. 

Despite his assurances that it was fine and he didn’t need to be down there warming up, I still caught him casually stretching out his calves and shoulders as he sat beside me. I did point it out the first time but he’d reacted so strongly in denial that I got all the laughs I needed from just that once. 

Me thinks the boy doth protest too much. 

But once I’d had my laugh and we’d settled into silence again, I realised I actually had no idea why Marco would rather sit there with me doing nothing rather than join in the warm-up he was so obviously keen to get started on. I mean, he was so keen he couldn’t help stretching even when he was supposedly skipping. 

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He was smiling again. Not the brilliant smile that turned me into a lemming, wanting for nothing but to follow him to the ends of the Earth. This was a gentle smile, barely pulling at the corners of his mouth. I wasn’t even sure that he knew he was doing it.

He was happy, I realised, and it was strange.

Why was he happy? No, wait, that sounds like a stupid question. I’m sure most people don’t need a specific reason to be happy, it’s just their default setting. Marco had always seemed like one of those people. But I ask it because this was… It’s hard to put into words. It seemed like a different sort of happiness. Different how? I’m not sure but it was different.

No, he wasn’t happy. He was content. He was content, sitting beside me in silence, watching me laugh at his not-very-discreet attempts to begin his warm-up while still sitting down, watching his team run up and down the field, just sitting there. He was content being with me.

And it was strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again all! I'm currently sitting in the library at uni being incredibly tired because I got up when I'd only had 5hrs sleep to get to a lecture on time, only for the lecture to not be on this week. I could have slept for a good four hours more... I should really start checking the student-admin interface more often...   
> Anywho! I'm back, sort of. This chapter was hell to write just because the plot needed to slow down a little here to prepare for what's about to happen. I don't know how good this is... seeing as I wrote some of it at about three in the morning when I woke up just like, 'I know how to get passed this point! I've got to write it before I lose it!' and I wrote the rest of it this morning where I am, understandably, probably just as tired as I was at 3am.   
> Okey! I'll go now and stop sleepily rambling. Hopefully this is okay. Let me know what you think! I love talking to people about random weird world-building, characterisation and just general writing stuff. Hopefully, I'll get some sleep soon and get the next chapter out for you. It should be Ymir's exhibition, if I manage to make it that far...   
> 'Till next time!  
> \-- Ocean.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ymir's exhibit. We also meet Jean's sister and mother. Plot happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Australian things:  
> 1\. Flannie -- I've forgotten to mention this one because I gave an explanation in the previous version. A flannie is just a flannelette shirt.  
> 2\. Mustard/orange/blue-coloured notes -- I think I would fail to function in America where money isn't colour coded. Mustard is $50, orange is $20, blue is $10 (also $5 are pink and I've totally forgotten what colour the 100s are... yellow?) Also, we call them 'notes' not 'bills'.  
> 3\. Clancy of the Overflow and A.B 'Banjo' Patterson (AKA 'Banjo Pat', according to my sister and, apparently, Marco) -- It's actually a romanticised poem about droving - that is: the driving of cattle from one location (usually a food/water source) to another. But that bloody shearing reference in the first stanza always throws me off. What Marco recites is just that first stanza. There are actually 8 stanzas.  
> 4\. Legit -- people say 'legit' overseas, don't they? They do. I've decided. It means 'legitimate' for anyone wondering, though.  
> 5\. Reminder that 'deso' means 'designated driver'.

Ymir’s paint felt silky against my fingertips and I swirled it back and forth between my thumb and pointer absently.

“You know,” she said, looking down at me from her canvas, “you’re welcome to use them for something other than finger painting. You just gotta pay me back, though. Oils are expensive.”

We were in her studio in Marco’s share house. I don’t know how she did it but she’d managed to strong-arm their landlord into letting her get as much paint on the floor as she liked. There were conditions, of course. When she left, she had to repaint and recarpet the whole room. I had the feeling that she’d repaint it in some horrible, puke-inducing, vibrant colour to make the poor landlord deeply regret his trust in her, maybe a graffiti-inspired mural just to see how much she could get away with.

After all, she’d only agreed to repaint the room, right? There’d been no restrictions on how she did it.

I didn’t really understand Ymir’s art -- I’d never really understood abstract art in the first place -- but she seemed to be more successful than I’d ever be so I could only assume it was good. Right then, she was standing in front of a canvas sporting nothing more than a handful of blue, spread like peanut butter over the surface in a casual stripe. I knew there’d be more added to it. Her paintings were heavy, thick with paint and debris she seemed to have collected from her backyard. I was sitting on the ground on one of the few patches of carpet that had miraculously remained without paint trodden thoroughly into it.

I looked down at the newspaper she’d half-heartedly spread below her easel; if she was going to have to replace the carpet anyway, why bother with protecting it? I’d started some sort of spiral with the silky paint on my fingers without even noticing.

“Nah, I’m fine,” I replied. “Just doodling.”

She raised an eyebrow at me and held out the palette. “You sure? I could do with some more ‘flesh tone’ and I’m short on cash. Don’t know why the call it ‘flesh tone’ to be honest, though. I mean, you ever seen anyone with skin this colour?”

She chucked me a tiny tube of yellow-ish/brown-ish paint. I can honestly say I’ve never seen anyone with skin that colour before in my life. Besides, wasn’t it a bit exclusive to decide ‘this is skin colour’ and reject all other tones?

I didn’t say that, though. I just rolled my eyes and dipped my fingers into her paint as offered and she turned back to her blue canvas.

I took my thumb, now coated in a dark navy covering, and slid it down the newspaper beside my knee. It formed a shape similar to one half of an hour glass. With a bit of cajoling it could just about pass for the profile of someone’s face. I spread the navy away from the profile, colouring in a night sky, making sure to leave patches where the words on the paper could still shine through (some tiny font about stocks or something else important-sounding) so I could layer it with some other, lighter colour later. I dipped my fingers into Ymir’s palette again, scooping up some of her blue -- the same from that peanut butter stripe on her canvas. I spread the blue over the night, mixing it on the paper, scraping it back with my thumbnail, mixing it between my fingers, spreading it over again and pushing it around. Then I set to fixing-up and colouring in the almost-face.

Luckily, I noticed who it was turning into early enough this time to contort it into another face. A young girl, Aboriginal or Islander if the nose was anything to go by, looked out at the world with shining eyes from beneath my hands. They were eyes filled with joy and wonder but, conversely, a tear rolled silently down her cheek. I stole from the palette again to add flashes of white to the sky for stars and mirrored them on the girl’s face -- reflected off her smooth, dark skin, in her eyes, from her tears.

Suddenly, I realised Ymir had stopped painting. I looked up from where I still knelt on her floor. The painting of the girl had grown much bigger than I’d expected and almost reached under the legs of her easel. Ymir just stood silently, watching my hands (now coated in blue, brown, black and white paint almost to the elbows) move over the newspaper on her floor.

I have no idea what the look on her face meant. Was it approval? Confusion? Anger at how much of her floor I’d commandeered?

“You know,” she said in a voice much softer than I was used to hearing from her, “You were right to switch over to art. You doing oils for your mid-sem?”

My mouth was dry. I’d always thought paints were my weakness when it came to art.

“Well, I was thinking maybe acrylic? Cheaper and probably easier for a beginner,” I said.

“Change it,” she replied. “Do oils. This is good. Really good. I mean, shit, Jean-bo, if I’d painted like this in second year, I doubt I’d have bothered to stick around for a Masters and just gone off to make my fortune.”

I just nodded in response.

I have to admit, my emotions were a little mixed at that moment. On one hand I was humbled by her praise, considering Ymir was probably on the the successful side of art school graduates and the fact that no one had really praised anything I’d made since I was a kid. And even then it’d been my mum with things like, ‘oh, that’s lovely, dear. What’s this, a giraffe?’ as she pointed at my scribble of the neighbour’s cat. But on the other, I completely dismissed her advice. Because I couldn’t paint oils. Monsieur Bosch used oils. They weren’t mine. They were his and I would never… I mean, I couldn’t take…  It just wasn’t my thing. It was his. I just couldn’t.

Just then, like he’d been summoned, Marco knocked on the studio door and ducked his head around the frame without waiting for a response.

“Jean, it’s probably about t-- Whoa, this is amazing. Did you paint this?” he said.

It was probably a good idea not to tell him it’d almost been his face painted over the floor.

I just shrugged.

Marco walked reverently around the room, placing his feet slowly and carefully as if his step in the doorway could tear my painting on the other side of the room. I wished I still had enough paint on my fingers to take down that expression of awe on his face. That was one I’d love to see again. Especially when it’d been me that had brought it out.

“God,” he murmured, “I’d never be able to do something like this in a million years.”

I scratched at my ear awkwardly. It was covered in navy and grey in a moment.

“Sure you could,” I said as casually as I could, that face was still doing things to my stomach. “It’s just practice.”

Marco laughed softly. “No way, I can’t paint to save my life. I’m pretty rubbish at all art, honestly.”

I frowned at that. “There’s no way you’re not good at art.” He was Monsieur Bosch, after all.

“What do you mean?”

“You were saying something before, Marc?” Ymir cut in.

“Right. Of course.” He shook the thought from his head. “What time did you have to be at your parents’ place, Jean?”

I shrugged. I didn’t actually have to be back at any time but it was the Friday afternoon after my twenty-first birthday and I was still caught in my own lie. I’d told Marco I was doing ‘family stuff’ for my birthday on Saturday, after all.

“Any time this afternoon, really,” I perpetuated the lie.

“Well, it’s two now. D’you want me to give you a lift?”

My mouth was dry and I could only shrug again. Marco alone with me in a car, a confined space, for the forty minutes or so it’d take to get to West Trost.

“Sure,” I choked out.

Fuck , this was getting out of hand. I needed to get a handle on these feelings. Get a handle on them and then throw them out the nearest window before they could break my heart.

Marco grinned at me and I shoved my hands deep in my pockets to keep myself from reaching out and touching his face. Then I whipped them out again. They were still covered in paint.

Ymir burst out laughing and I felt my face go red. I’d liked those jeans.

 

**

 

_I told them I was going to the market so I don’t have more than a few hours. I slip the basket onto my arm and pin my hat firmly down. I am perhaps too nicely dressed for the marketplace but Papa doesn’t notice. He has found the bottle of absinthe Maman had hid in the kitchen. Maman comes to see me off at the door. She places one of her dry and wrinkled hands on my forearm and looks up at me with that same watery smile she had shown while I was reading her Marco’s letters. She knows where I am going. Even without me telling her. I kiss her cheek quickly and hurry out the door._

_I skirt the marketplace, looking far too wealthy to risk a place so full of thieves, and hurry through Paris to the cheap and dirty corner in which Marco lives. I don’t go into his studio. I haven’t got the time. I only slide my letter under the door and hurry down the stairs once more._

_On the way home again, I risk the market but I only go in as far as I need to in order to fill my basket with enough of an excuse. Then I am home. The whole excursion has taken barely two hours and Papa is still passed out drunk in the living room._

_The factory is working smoothly and we have moved to a bigger apartment. The furniture is expensive and we are eating more than we should. But nothing changes the fact that, if I didn’t know he was my father, I would assume Papa was a homeless man Maman had taken pity on and let into the house. He is dirty and smelly and, even when asleep, so loud and out of place in our clean living room. Still, I thank God that he is asleep. If he could see me coming in more flushed than I should have been from a trip to buy vegetables, I am sure he wouldn’t even bother getting his belt and just hit me with his fists._

 

**

 

I wasn’t doing anything at all, just lying face down on  my bed, still wet from the shower to wash off all that paint, exhausted from a car-ride of lies, when my phone rang. I didn’t bother checking the caller-ID before picking up.

“Hello?”

“Oh, Jean, thank god you picked up.”

“Adrianne?” I sat up, still in nothing more than a towel, on my bed.

“I need your help.” She sounded like she was in the middle of running a marathon.

“Shit, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Can you pick up my report for me?”

Are you fucking kidding me? She almost caused me to have a heart-attack, calling me out of breath and out of character like she was on the run from the law, and it was just her report?

“What?” I spat.

“I left it at home. Please Jean!”

“Why don’t you get it yourself? You have a car.”

“I’m already late! Please, Jean, I’m begging you here. I’ll... I’ll even pay you for petrol or whatever just please go home and get my report for me. I’m presenting today.”

I sighed. What else was I supposed do that afternoon? Nothing. I’d lied to Marco so he wouldn’t be asking me to do anything and it was Friday so I was already done with classes. Besides, I was home anyway and that was half the journey in the first place.

I sighed. “You realise this is going to take me, like, half an hour, right?”

“I’ll ask to present last. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You’re the bestest brother in the world! It’s just sitting on my desk. I gotta go, see ya!”

And then she hung up.

I groaned, pulled on some jeans, and tromped down the hall to Adrianne’s room. There it was, that Design History report, sitting carefully positioned but still forgotten on her spotless desk.

 

**

 

Reiss University was the pretty uni in Trost, the beautiful Sandstone University with manicured lawns and a prestigious history. University of Trost was... well, when you feel the need to immediately apologise when someone finds out what uni you go to, there has to be something wrong. Nobody would want to come to the city of Trost for uni and end up at UT. If you’re coming to Trost, you’re bloody well heading to Reiss U. That’s just the way it is. Unless your name is Conor Springer but then you’d be an anomaly in every possible way so don’t worry about it.

So, there I was, strolling down one of their little cobbled paths between some beautifully manicured lawn and the third (or possibly fourth) library holding a small stack of paper filled with jargon I didn’t understand and looking very much _not_ like a Reiss U student in my scrubby jeans and flannie.

I checked the campus map from the Reiss U website on my phone again and made my way to the Djanga Building where Adrianne would apparently be. The room was long and narrow with some sort of indigenous dot-painting running along one whole wall. Pushed up against the wall was a seat, a long wooden-slatted box that had been stained a dark colour. The other wall was made of nothing but glass and looked out onto that little cobbled path between the impressive lawn and the third library where I had been walking moments before. The dark, slate floor reflected back the autumn sun with a dull orange glow.

And there was Adrianne, looking every bit like Jeanne Blumstein would with short hair and a handful of piercings. Her hair was perfectly styled, just as it always was whenever she had to leave the house. It had grown since I’d last seen her. Really, it was times like this, when I hadn’t seen her for a while, when I could understand how people used to think we were twins.

There were two years between us but our faces were almost identical. I’m sure if we were both shaved completely bald, you wiped the thick eye make-up off Adrianne’s face, and we wore the same clothes, no one would be able to tell us apart. Until we stood side by side and it was suddenly obvious I was about a head taller than she was.

Though, I’m not sure if my eyes were quite as nice as hers. It was unfair that we looked so similar but I somehow missed out on her best feature.

Her eyes were brownish-green, like a cat’s, and flicked up just slightly at the corners. That day, as she turned to face me and the sun fell across her face, her eyes changed colour. They flashed gold in the sunlight as she smiled in recognition.

“Jean!” she called, waving her arm at me as if she wasn’t the only person standing in the foyer there. I was hardly going to miss her.

I raised the small stack of paper by way of my own wave. “Here you are, you giant, forgetful lump,” I said. “I can’t believe you left this at home. How many times have you done this now?”

Adrianne slung her laptop bag back onto her shoulder and muttered a small thank you as she took the report from my arms. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Seven?”

I scoffed. “Seven times too many...”

“Why are you so grumpy?”

“I’m always like this.”

“Did I pull you away from something important? Were you working or something? Oh!” She gasped, putting her hands over her mouth in mock-shock. “Were you with your girlfriend?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Oh, Jean!” She slapped me harshly on the back. “Sorry, sorry!”

“Stop that,” I said. “You know I don’t have one...”

If I did, I might not be in the trouble that I was with Marco.

Adrianne laughed softly. “Sorry.” The apology sounded genuine this time. “So what are you doing if you haven’t got a girl? Why do you never come home? I mean, you didn't even come home on Thursday and that was your birthday. Your _twenty-first_ birthday, Jean.”

“I dunno. This and that. I mean, I am a student so I’ve been studying but, other than that, just hanging out with people or watching Netflix... You know, normal stuff.”

“You have the most boring life.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“So... tell me about your roommates,” she insisted. She’d never lived in student housing and still found the whole thing exotic and fascinating.

I huffed out a sigh. “Don’t you have a presentation to give?”

“Psht! It’s fine. They’ll still be going in fifteen minutes. I wanna know what my little brother’s been doing for the last month.”

So I slid my wallet and phone out of my back pocket and we both sat on the long, wooden-slatted box that passed for a seat in the slate-tiled foyer of the Djanga Building.

Then I just sort of rambled on for ten minutes or so. Occasionally Adrianne would prompt me for some specific detail (‘Exactly how tall is Bert? I want centimetres here.’) but otherwise she stayed silent as I talked about my roommates and my lecturers, my tutors and my classes. I carefully avoided mentioning Marco, though. I still hadn’t heard the end of when she’d last caught wind of one of my crushes. And that was when I was fifteen. Finally, the words ran dry and both Adrianne and I checked our watches in perfect sync.

“Shit, I gotta go,” she said, surging back to her feet and practically throwing her laptop bag onto her shoulder. “You gotta call me sometimes, Jean! And come home once in awhile, Mum’s going mad without you.” Then she hurried through the foyer to the door leading into the rest of the building.

“Adrianne!” I called before she could disappear.

“What is it? Do you miss me already, Genie-baby?” She smiled.

“You forgot your report again, idiot.” I pointed down at the stack of paper still sitting beside me on the box.

Adrianne pulled a ‘woops!’ face before hurrying back and tucking the report under her arm. Then she gave an over-serious military salute before hurrying off back to class.

I sat there, looking out onto the lawn and the library and the path that ran between them, for a minute or so before I stood up and headed back to the parking lot where my parent’s car still was.

 

**

 

“Hello?” I called out as I shut the front door behind me.

It was Sunday, the day of Ymir’s exhibition. I’d dropped back to the dorm for Saturday night -- I’d needed to pick up a decent change of clothes, anyway -- but was back home again for the second time in as many days. Connie wouldn’t shut up about the ‘birthday date’ I was apparently about to go on when he’d seen me. I don’t know where he got the inkling of what this trip to an indi gallery really meant for me but whoever put the idea in his head would be eating dirt the next time I saw them.

“Hello!” came the single-voiced reply from the kitchen.

I dropped my bag in the foyer and sauntered off towards the voice.

Mum stood at the bench, steadily adding pieces of chicken into a marinade.

“Where is everyone?” I asked as I slid onto a barstool in front of her.

She replied without looking up. “Adrianne’s in her room and I have no idea where your father is. Have you tried his office?”

His ‘office’, while sounding impressive, was really just a tiny pre-fab in the back corner of the yard.

I grunted a reply.

She scored the skin of three more pieces of chicken and lowered them into the white-wine, oil and herbs, rubbing the flavour in deeply with her fingertips before either of us spoke again.

“Hey, Mum?” I started.

She looked up at me over the top of her silver-rimmed reading glasses.

She didn’t speak a word but her expression clearly said ‘what do you want now?’ I was beginning to doubt she really was ‘going mad’ without me.

“I was wondering… I mean, my mid-semester project is turning out to be bigger than expected.” Especially if I could put aside the weird feeling I got from using Monsieur Bosch’s medium and take Ymir’s advice.

“You need money, don’t you?”

“Yes. That would be optimal,” I replied.

Mum sighed.

“But a friend of a friend has a studio in her house so I won’t ask for studio-rental fees this semester? Does that make it better?”

I hadn’t actually asked her yet but I couldn’t see Ymir turning me down. Actually, yes I could. Very easily. But I would deal with that when the problem arrived.

Mum’s eyes shone with hope. “Her?”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t get so excited, Mum. She already has a girlfriend.”

“Pity,” said Mum.

She wiped her hands on her apron and walked around the island bench, across the living room floor, to where her handbag sat on the couch. I trailed after her.

“Don’t tell your father. I’ll never hear the end of it,” she said and I knew that meant I’d be limited to whatever cash she could find.

Sure enough, she pressed two mustard-coloured notes into my hand. I stared down at the hundred.

“Uh, Mum, I hate to be the ungrateful child but I think you’re underestimating just how much paints are.”

“Jesus. You’re bleeding me dry here, Jean-bo.” She pulled an orange note from her purse and returned to the kitchen to pull  a blue and another orange from the groceries-fund on top of the fridge.

They joined the hundred in my hand.

Then Mum grabbed me firmly by the chin and turned my face to hers.

“I expect change,” she said sternly.

“Yes, Mum,” was all I could reply.

To be honest, with what I had in mind, I don’t know how much change she’d be getting from her $150. What with the cost of three wooden boards and a full set of oils plus brushes… For my own sake, I hoped it would be enough to satisfy her.  

  


**

 

Marco ended up picking me up in his beat up old truck to go to Ymir’s exhibition. I was glad I wouldn’t have to find my way through North Trost with nothing but a computerised voice to guide me.

We didn’t really talk on the way. Or maybe we did and I was just so nervous I wiped it from my memory.

The next thing I knew, we were arriving. The sound of some obscure and esoteric music poured softly out of the high, open windows of what appeared to just be a large woolshed.

“Oh no…” Marco groaned beside me.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, really. Just that anything even remotely to do with shearing immediately has _Clancy of the Overflow_ stuck in my head for days.” He gave a small smile.

I just looked at him blankly.

“Oh, come on,” he said, slamming his truck’s door shut with that strange hollow sound that only comes from a truly ancient car. “ _Clancy of the Overflow_! Banjo Pat! You have to know it.”

We set off for the large open doors as Marco began to recite.

_I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better_

_Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago._

He looked at me and raised his eyebrows as if expecting me to join in but the poem continued in a steady stream of words from his mouth.

_He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,_

_Just ‘on spec’, addressed as follows, ‘Clancy, of the Overflow’._

“Nope,” I said, hoping it would make him stop. “Don’t know it.”

“I really thought everyone did _Clancy_ at some point in school. I can keep going if you want? Give you a proper appreciation for the Aussie classics.”

“Please don’t. Really. Don’t.”

Marco laughed.

 

The gallery was livelier than any other I had ever been to. It wasn’t the polished white-tile floors and specially controlled heating, lighting and humidity sort of gallery, that was for sure. It really was just a woolshed, with a solid oak frame and corrugated iron walls. There was an outdoor heater placed in the corners of the open space to ward off the autumn chill that was scheduled to invade in just a few hours. The visitors were dressed in that strange style that seemed to suggest they’d spent four hours trying to look like they’d just rolled out of bed and were paying as much attention to each other as they were the paintings. I felt horribly over-dressed in my collared shirt and jeans. They chatted and drank and smoked away. It seemed like the fact that they were surrounded by art was purely a coincidence and they’d actually left the house just to catch up with some friends.

There was even a little make-shift bar, made from two stacks of breezeblocks and a pulled off door, down one end of the shed. That’s where Ymir was. She sat on a white, plastic deck chair, sipping some bright blue drink and occasionally taking a drag on her cigarette. She raised the glowing ember at us in an almost-wave when she saw us approach.

“Are all your exhibits like this?” I asked by way of greeting.

“Nah, this is just all the stuff that wasn’t good enough for legit galleries. It’s not just my stuff here, though, and some of it’s pretty good,” she said.

“Oh yeah, like what?” said Marco as he handed over a twenty dollar note to her and she tucked it into a safe-box under the torn-off door.

No one had told me there was an entrance fee. I looked at Marco but he just shook his head with a smile. His eyes seemed to say, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve got you covered.’

I shrugged but still felt uncomfortable with the idea. How many times had I told myself that that night wasn’t supposed to be a date?

Ymir took another sip of her fluorescent drink. “Well, take that sculpture in the corner, for example…”

I wasn’t listening to her, to be honest. She pointed out her fellow artists, commented on their work, talked about her own. But I was using that carefully developed skill essential for the modern world: looking like you’re listening while actually completely zoning out.

She caught me, though.

Ymir paused mid-sentence and glanced my way. I forced my eyes to meet hers and raised my eyebrows as if to say, ‘Why’d you stop?’ but she only smirked at me and shook her head.

“You’re such a loser, Jean,” she said.

“What?” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” she replied. “Well, I should go walk around a bit. see the sights, and all.” Then she leaned one elbow on Marco’s shoulder to whisper something in his ear.

His face contorted in fear for a moment before he brushed her off angrily.

“I know,” he whispered. “I know. I will. Don’t rush me.”

Ymir just shrugged and wandered off into the crowd.

“What was that about?” I asked when she’d gone.

“Just… don’t worry about it,” he said. “D’you want a drink?”

He was obviously trying to change the subject but I let him do it. He was Marco, after all. And I was his lemming.

 

We wandered aimlessly through the woolshed between the paintings and sculptures and that one, strange interactive piece where we had to stand at a monitor and find all the fragments of digital-underwear to put them back together. That was a strange one. I grew used to the esoteric music and the fluorescent drinks and the fashion sense of the other guests. I grew numb to understanding the deeper levels of meaning behind the art. I grew used to Marco’s warmth beside me. And I began to enjoy myself. I could have had something to do with the four and half bright orange, jam-jar cocktails that were pulsing around my system but, before I knew it, I had forgotten all the unease I’d felt going into the exhibit. I’d forgotten that I was terrified of fucking up and making Marco hate me. But four and a half drinks in and I was at ease. We laughed and I smiled, genuinely smiled -- it wasn’t a smirk. The room grew hot as the outdoor heaters came on and the alcohol pumped through my veins and, at last, Marco suggested we head outside.

The air felt cold on my flushed cheeks but I relished in the feeling. I opened my mouth and took a deep breath. The cold was sucked into my lungs, clinging to the recesses of my mouth, pouring down my throat and layering itself on the inside of my lungs. I breathed it out again and smiled as it formed a foggy cloud before my nose.

I caught Marco watching me out of the corner of my eye. He’d called it a day at one fluorescent cocktail, what with being deso and all, and was probably a great deal more sober than I was.

I probably looked like a kid. My face had the habit of growing pink and shiny when I drank, I knew, and with the flush, all the hard edges I’d spent so long cultivating in order to actually look my age disappeared. I was suddenly that chubby-cheeked, baby-faced fifteen year old again.

“What?” I said.

Marco balanced his cheek in his hand and smiled.

“Marco, what are you looking at?” I tried again.

“Nothing,” he said, that infuriating smile still on his face.

“Then why are you staring at me?”

_It’s because the baby-face has been revealed, isn’t it?_

“You’re just really cute,” he said.

I glared at him. “Cute? Marco, I’m not a kid.”

“I know. You’re twenty-one. _Twenty-one_.” He held out an imaginary microphone towards me. “You’ve just turned twenty-one this week. How do you feel, Mr Kirschstein?”

I batted it away. “Oh, please,” I said. “That’s like saying, ‘congrats, you’ve been allowed to drink and vote for three years already. How do you feel?’ It’s not like it’s actually a significant age anymore. Except in America.”

Marco laughed and leapt to his feet. “Right! It’s decided, then. We’re going to America!”

He grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet, too.

“Now?” I groaned but I was laughing so the effect was ruined somewhat.

“Right now. Right this very second. Where’s your passport?”

“We don’t have travel insurance! What if we get sick?”

Marco’s laugh grew louder. I wondered whether that one drink had done more than I’d given it credit for.

“Oh, man,” he said. “We’d be fucked.”

God, I really was his own personal lemming. I swear, I was ready to actually jump on a plane right then. Just so long as it was Marco leading the way. Who cares that a last-minute flight to America would probably cost all my savings, or that we had uni the next day, or that we had nowhere to stay once we got there, or that there probably wouldn’t be seats still free. If Marco was going, I’d leave Australia behind in a flash and fly across the pacific.

That was probably a little dangerous. But I really didn’t care right then. Because Marco was staring at me again. His eyes flashed slightly orange in the glow from the outdoor heaters. They smiled at me before flicking down for a moment at where Marco’s hand was still gripped around mine.

He pulled back with a start.

“Ah, sorry,” he said.

I bit my lip.

The night felt cold again. I felt my skin prickle at it. The laughter was gone along with the alcohol that was running thin in our systems by then. I could still hear the slow pulse of the esoteric music from inside the woolshed and the gentle chatter of the other guests as they discussed coffee shops on campus rather than the art before their eyes.

Marco turned away and rubbed one hand against the back of his neck.

“Jean, I…” he tried before he looked away. “I should probably tell you something,” he told the wall of the woolshed.

He cast another glance over his shoulder to be sure I was listening before climbing up to sit on the woodpile we’d been perched on before.

He wasn’t staring at me anymore. In fact, he could barely meet my eye.

“Sorry, Jean could you not… not stand right in front of me? I don’t know if I have the guts to say this while looking at you,” he confirmed.

I went to join him on the woodpile but he stopped me.

“Ah, you might not want -- I mean, after I tell you, you might not really want to sit so close,” he said.

“You don’t have some awful, infectious disease, do you?” I attempted a joke. “Because, if so, I’d really have preferred it if you’d told me earlier.”

Marco forced a laugh. And he really forced it, there was the sound of forgery in every corner of it. My stomach lurched, and not in a good way.

I settled at the foot of the woodpile, a good couple of metres from him, with my back to him all the same.

I heard him draw a long breath. “I don’t think you’re stupid, Jean,” he started.

“Well, that’s good to know,” I said.

“I hadn’t finished. I don’t think you’re stupid, Jean, so you’ve probably worked it out already.” He took another shaking breath. “God, this is as bad as coming out to my parents. But that’s essentially what this is, Jean. I’m coming out to you. Officially.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. “Marco, I know. Relax. I don’t care. Really.”

If anything, I was glad.

“No, you don’t understand,” he said.

He stared at me again as I peeked over my shoulder at him.

“Turn around again,” he ordered.

I obeyed, of course.

“You don’t understand because… because… I mean, fuck, look at you, Jean. You’re -- I mean, God, how could I --?”

“Marco you’re not exactly making sense,” I said.

I was biting my tongue because I _wasn’t_ stupid. I was pretty sure I knew what this was, I definitely knew what I hoped it was, but I could only wait for the end. I was too afraid I might be wrong to finished his sentence.

“I know I’m not,” he said and then he stopped.

There was a good thirty seconds where the only sounds were those that poured out from inside the woolshed.

I was trembling. My arms were gripped like a vice around my knees to keep them under control but even then I was still trembling. With hope. With fear. With the need to confirm for myself. I chewed on my tongue until it was ragged, trying to force some courage into it.

Still Marco said nothing.

I shut my eyes, clenched my jaw, took a deep breath in and held it for five long seconds, before I finally spoke for him.

“Are you always this fumbling when you tell someone you like them?”

The sound of the chattering and music from inside reached my ears again.

“I swear I’m not,” he replied.

I was suddenly glad I wasn’t facing him, after all.

“Then what makes me different?”

Marco laughed self-derisively and I heard the gentle sound of him running his hands through his hair. “We already saw what happened when I tried to explain that. Please don’t make me try again.”

I tightened the vice around my knees a little more and licked my lips.

“Marco,” I said. “Can I turn around now?”

“Alright.”

How do I describe the look on his face? There was a shadow cast across most of it and he was backlit by the open door to the woolshed so he was little more than a silhouette. His face was probably almost a reflection of my own. But where my face was predominantly hope, Marco’s was predominantly fear. His eyes, the same eyes I feel like I’ve told you about a million times, were completely hidden in shadow but I could see his brows pulled together and down over them.

I understood why he hadn’t wanted to look at me.

I tried to smile at him, to reassure him somehow that I was so ecstatic that I’d lost all feeling to my toes, but I don’t think I pulled it off. Instead, I just peeled one hand off my knee and held it out before me.

“I’m shaking,” I told him.

“I’m sorry.”

“Is this real?”

“I’m sorry, Jean.”

He wasn’t looking at me, I realised. He’d let me turn around but he still wasn’t looking at me.

“Marco,” I said.

He didn’t look up. I climbed up the woodpile to kneel beside him.

“Marco,” I said again. “You might not have some awful, infectious disease but I still would have preferred it if you’d told me this earlier.”

He looked up, then. He saw my face. His expression turned inside out until he was all hope and no fear.

“Look at this, you’re making me be the brave one. And we both know this should be the other way around,” I said.

“You’re not a coward, Jean. You just think you are,” he replied.

“Well, I’m definitely more of a coward than you are.”

He was staring at me again. Neither of us had actually said it in words but sometimes dancing around the issue was the only way to move forward.

“Can I kiss you?” he said suddenly, looking me right in the eye and I knew we’d finally made it around the obstacle before us.

I just rolled my eyes and he leant forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy crap. I'm so sorry I've been away for so long. This chapter was hell to write. And so bloody long! 6462 words!  
> My apologies to people who read the last version who will recognise the Adrianne bit. She needs to be introduced at some point, all right?  
> Also... It happened! Finally! About bloody time! There's only so long I can write Jean worrying about giving up his feelings before I snap. Sorry Marco seems a bit OOC. When that sort of thing happens it's usually just because I'm sitting there at the computer going 'how the hell do I write this?!?" Also sorry for any typos, I kind of just finished this, read through it once and, was so glad to have it done, decided to post it.  
> I kind of crashed and burned at uni this semester so... I don't have any exams! Yay!! (because I've already failed all the subjects that would have exams... less yay.) I still have one more thing due... today. Yeah, that's due today. Shit. But then I'm free! (for about three weeks... then winter term starts...) So hopefully I'll start to get these chapter out to you more regularly.  
> I feel like there was something else I wanted to talk about... Oh well! If it's important, I'll remember and tell you next chap!
> 
> 'Till then,  
> Ocean.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first week of dating Marco was cute. But let's brush over that and move straight on to Easter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there are too many Australian references in this one. Just 'Bunnings' which is short for 'Bunnings Warehouse'. It's just a DIY place. A bit like Home Depot in the US or... sorry, I don't know a UK equivalent but you know what I mean, right? 
> 
> Oh, I suppose there's also Canberra. Canberra is the capital of Australia, built specially for the purpose of being the capital. I live there so I'm allowed to make fun of it. Actually it's almost funny how hyper-aware we are of how much the rest of the country doesn't like us...

 

The first week of dating Marco was very cute. Probably more cute than I would have tolerated the week before. There was handholding and secret glances (only to look away a moment later) and that weird feeling of achievement I usually only got when I reached the end of a particularly long project.

Because I’d gotten Marco. 

I’d done it. Somehow. To be honest, I still wasn’t exactly sure why I’d gotten him, considering how little energy I’d put into catching him and how much I’d put into giving him up. At every little, cute brush of our hands, I kept expecting him to slap a hand to his forehead and cry, ‘What am I doing?’ and just forget about the whole thing. But he hadn’t come to his senses. Not yet, anyway. I could still feel proud of myself, steal a glance in his direction without feeling guilty and hold his hand.

I didn’t say a word to my dorm-mates. I think they worked it out, though. Well, Connie and Armin did, at any rate. Bert, innocent baby that he is, probably just thought we’d deepened our friendship somehow. 

Mercifully, Connie didn’t say anything. He just kept giving me knowing grins every time Marco was there, or when I got a text from him, or he was mentioned. 

Actually, I think I might have preferred it if he’d teased me once and got it over with.

Armin, the angel in comparison, just told me, ‘I’m glad,’ once suddenly over breakfast one morning and left it at that. But he had such a serene smile on his face while he said it, I couldn’t doubt it was the truth.

That first week was so cute, I even dragged Marco on an exciting trip to Bunnings to get the plywood sheets and a few other boring things for my mid-sem project. 

I’d been right. I hadn’t even gotten on to the actual art supplies and I’d already gone over Mum’s $150 budget. But I scrounged up a 20 and gave it back to her as ‘change’ all the same. 

Still, the gross, cute, DIY shopping times could only last so long as the Easter long weekend rolled around. I was expected back home for that. It wasn’t even a lie this time.

 

it was Thursday afternoon. I’d be heading back to my parents’ place the next morning for the holiday but, for the moment, classes were done for the day and I was just hanging out at Marco’s.

Marco tucked his freezing feet under my thigh as we sat on the couch. He was studying, nose deep in a physiology textbook, with his Macbook on the coffee table beside him. I was not. I was sketching but not what I should be (my project drafts). It wasn’t Marco, either, for once. 

Samuel was there, too, hidden behind a wall of textbooks so high I was beginning to think he was building a fort with them rather than studying, and it was him that I was sketching. The little tuft of brown hair poking over the top of the wall and the single eye that peeked out at me through a gap from time to time.

I couldn’t know what Marco had told his housemates but they certainly didn’t question our newfound closeness. Then again, they’d never really stopped calling me ‘Marco’s new boy’ since that first meeting so perhaps this was just the natural progression of things for them.

“Oh yeah,” I said to Marco as Samuel moved and I had to pause in my sketch. “You doing anything special Easter? Going home for the weekend?”

Samuel’s head poked up over the book-fort again.

“That’s a taboo topic, man. Don’t go there,” he said.

“No, it’s fine,” said Marco.

He repositioned his feet underneath me to take full advantage of my body heat on his icy toes and closed his textbook around a finger.

“It’s just that my parents are divorced and, while my dad lives in Trost, my mum’s pretty far away.”

“Far away where?” I asked warily, really hoping she wasn’t dead or something.

“Canberra,” answered Marco.

“Canberra?”

“Canberra,” he confirmed.

Okay, at least that was better than being dead. Marginally.

“Why does she live in Canberra when you were born here? Who the hell would want to move from Trost to Canberra?”

Marco scratched his nose in that awkward way he had.

“Ahhh…” he said. “That’s kind of my fault. When I made the national team… They didn’t  _ have  _ to move, I suppose, I could have just gone there by myself. I was still in school, of course, but I could have gone to a boarding school or something. But Mum insisted we all go. Only ones still at home at that point were Max, Lilly and me, though, so it could have been worse.”

“Why’d you have to move to Canberra just because you made the national team?” I asked, ignoring the fact that, even with two of his siblings out of the picture, his family was still bigger than mine.

Marco just shook his head with a smile.

Samuel was less kind. “Are you an idiot?” he said. “The AIS, obviously.”

Obviously, I  _ was  _ an idiot. The Australian Institute of Sport. Of course the national team trained there. Yet the thought hadn’t even occurred to me. 

“Okay,” I said, trying to regain some dignity, “so you can’t really just pop down for the weekend to see her but what about your dad?”

I heard Samuel face-palm behind his book-fort.

I’d probably just stepped in it again.

Marco scratched his nose again, confirming my fears.

“Nah, we don’t really… get along. I was also kind of the reason for their divorce, after all,” he said.

“No you weren’t!” Samuel chimed in. “In no way was that your fault.”

“Why, what happened?” I asked. It wasn’t exactly my place to know but that didn’t stop me wanting to.

“His dad’s a prick,” Samuel explained.

“No, he’s not,” said Marco. “He just… doesn’t understand.” He sighed and looked straight at me. I had a feeling I knew where the story was going and I was probably more inclined to agree with Samuel.

“When I came out to my parents,” Marco confirmed the expected direction, “he was pretty upset about it. Mum wanted to be ‘cool with it’. She tried so hard to be supportive. But Dad insisted it was only a phase. He didn’t even… Maybe he wasn’t even upset he just… insisted it wasn’t actually happening and that I’d grow out of it. Their marriage was already kind of shaky and I…” He chewed his lip. “I broke it.”

“Not your fault!” insisted Samuel again.

I turned at the waist so I could put both my hands on Marco’s knees. “That’s  _ not  _ your fault,” I said as emphatically as I could.

What else could I have said? Logic told me it wasn’t his fault his dad was a prick. I knew it. Somewhere in that brilliant mind of his, Marco probably knew it too. But emotions are unreliable, unpredictable, crazy things. That’s one thing I’d learnt, if nothing else, in the last few weeks. 

I did try to imagine it, to place myself in Marco’s place in the hopes that I would know what I could say to kick his emotions out of the way and let legic shine through. I tried to imagine five years or more of living under the conviction that you had destroyed your own parents’ marriage -- destroyed their marriage for no other reason than existing honestly. I tried to imagine the guilt and pain and self-blame. And failed. My brain kept jumping in to tell me that it wouldn’t be my fault, if it had happened to me, it would some fault between the parents; the father was too bigoted, the mother was too soft-willed to set him right, their relationship had been tenuous already. It wouldn’t be my fault. But those five years or more where emotion had reigned in his head, Marco had done exactly that: taken the blame for it. Taken it upon himself, probably so none of his siblings could take a share, and held it close to his heart so that he could protect that blame, care for it, nurture it, and never let it get out and hurt anyone else again. 

I guess that’s just the sort of person he is; intentionally hurting himself so others need not be. It was one of my favourite parts of him. But, right then, I wanted him to forget about the rest of the world and dump all his pain and guilt and blame on someone else, to take the weight off his shoulders and stand tall -- even if it  _ could  _ only be for a little while. He wouldn’t allow himself any longer than that.

He smiled at me but I knew I’d made no difference, nor was it really possible for me to. I hadn’t lived it. My words held no weight.

“Anyway!” said Marco, sliding his now-warmed toes out from beneath me and standing up. “I should probably get you back to your dorm. You’ve got a bag to pack.”

Then he left the room in silence.

Samuel and I looked at each other for a moment.

“I told you to not go there,” he said.

“His dad’s a prick,” I agreed.

 

**

 

I spent my Good Friday braving the hell of the supermarket on the Easter weekend in order to buy chocolate eggs for my cousins. It had been years since Adrianne and I had grown out of egg hunts but that apparently didn’t mean I’d escaped them all together. 

Adrianne offered no help. She was ‘too busy packing’ to take an afternoon off to carry baskets of chocolate wrapped in foil around a crowded supermarket. She was off to Denmark (or was it Norway?) the next day and, in true Adrianne-style, hadn’t even thought about packing until then. It was a uni trip; two weeks in Denmark (or Norway) to study Scandinavian architectural techniques first-hand.

Still, busy as she was, she still managed to find time to go out with her friends the night before she left, a big going-away party to send her off. That’s what she really spent most of Good Friday afternoon doing; getting ready for the party.

 

The blinds were drawn in my room. The windows were beginning to leak cold autumnal air into the house and I’d drawn them as a final defence against the cold. I didn’t mind it, though. I was wrapped up in a blanket, sitting in bed with my laptop balanced on my knees and packet of Tim Tams by my side. Really, it would have been the perfect way to spend an evening, had I not also been looking for art-supplies and trying to work out just how much more money I would need to conjure out of nowhere in order to finish this project. 

The current price was three hundred and fifty dollars. And that was assuming one set of paints would be enough and I wouldn’t run out over three large boards. I was royally screwed. 

To be fair, I’m sure my parent’s  _ could  _ have loaned it to me. We weren’t exactly hard-off. But ever since my dad’s company had taken off, he’d been obsessed with teaching both Adrianne and me the ‘value of a dollar’ and had become a complete miser. The bastard.

_ I’m sorry we can’t all have extremely successful real-estate businesses, Dad. _

My sigh caught halfway in my throat as my laptop gave a little chime and I glanced down to find a skype call coming through.

I smiled, despite myself. I was pretty sure I knew who it was.

Sure enough, when I hit receive, Marco’s exhausted-looking face filled my screen. He was in his room, as far as I could see, and smiling, despite the dark bags under his eyes. But, behind the smile, I could see how tired he was in every line on his face. He was also wearing glasses; rectangular ones with thick, black rims. They suited him, oddly enough, even if they were a slightly unexpected addition to his face.

“Oh, those are new,” I greeted him, though Monsieur Bosch had always painted with nose practically touching the canvas so maybe the need for them wasn’t quite so new.

“What was that?” His voice was gravely through my speakers. 

“Glasses. I’ve never seen you in them before.”

Marco plucked them from his face to look at them, as if he’d forgotten he was wearing them at all. “I’ve had them since I was fifteen,” he said. “They’re just for reading, though.”

I shrugged and wondered whether Jeanne should have spent some of her re-found wealth on a pair for Monsieur Bosch.

“So, how are you doing?” asked Marco. He’d said those same words at some point every day for the last week, whether by text or in person.

“You mean, since I saw you yesterday?” I teased.

“Of course!” His eyes darted down to the corner of his screen where I knew the clock must be. “29 hours can be a long time, you know?” 

I rolled my eyes at his devilish smile. Very Bosch. 

“I’m still fine,” I replied eventually. “Nothing dramatic has happened in the last 29 hours, I swear.”

“You sure?” His smile fell away. “You look exhausted.”

I scoffed at that. “You’re hardly one to talk. You look like a cheap zombie from some high school production.”

He laughed. “Really? I thought I’d managed to hide it. I was going to tell you after the release, Jean, but actually I’ve been recruited to star in a zombie thriller.”

“Oh, really? That’s good to know. Giving up on medicine to pursue a career in home-movies. Seems like a smart choice.”

He shrugged, laughter still playing in his eyes. “Hey, I found something I’m really good at. I can’t let this chance pass me by.”

“Something you’re really good at?”

“Groaning, looking mostly dead, and wandering around without any discernible purpose other than stealing other people’s brains.” He counted them out on his fingers. “Doesn’t that sound like me?”

I shook my head but the grin being barely held in check ruined the impression somewhat. 

Finally, I sighed. He was still laughing, he was still Marco, but I could only wonder at what had hollowed his cheeks and carved those dark circles below his eyes. And I cared. Fuck, it still felt weird to be able to admit that. But I really cared that he seemed on the verge of complete physical breakdown. Maybe I really had done something bad by bringing up his dad. What if I’d just opened old wounds? That zombie face could be entirely my fault.

“But seriously, Marco,” I said, the guilt pressing on the inside of my ribs, “are you alright?”

He looked at me through the screen, his face grainy, poorly-lit and lagging. He was making that expression again. The one that took away my rational thought. The lemming face. I’d realised in the last week or so that it was just the face he made when I did something he liked. It was Marco’s ‘I really like this person’ face. 

I’d immediately dismissed the idea when it had first occurred to me. After all, why would he show such a face to me? But then the logical part of my brain kicked me in the head and shouted back, ‘There has to be something there he likes! Otherwise he wouldn’t be with you!’ So eventually I accepted. Marco liked me. He liked me enough to show me that face on a regular basis; all gentle smile and soft eyes and relaxed features, his head tilted ever so slightly to one side. 

Marco’s affectionate face sent chills down my spine and turned my brain to mush.

“I’m okay, Jean. Just tired,” he said. “I always forget how busy this part of the semester is with study and work and training. So it catches me unprepared every time.”

I just looked at him.

“I’m fine, really,” he insisted. 

I frowned at him but before he could reassure me again, Farrlan’s head appeared over his shoulder in the frame. 

“Hey, Marc--” he started before he noticed me, “Oh, hey, Jean, what’s up?”

“Nothing much. Just home for Easter,” I replied.

“Oh, nice,” he said and turned back to Marco. “Marco, your phone rang, like, four times in the living room. It’s your brother again.”

Just then, my door opened a crack and Adrianne’s face peeked through at me. I shooed her away but she stayed.

“Oh, right,” said Marco. “I should go. He’s probably gotten himself lost or something again,” he said to me. 

“Nah, that’s fine.” I peeked at Adrianne again. “It looks like I’m about to be invaded here soon anyway.”

Marco raised an eyebrow in confusion before it clicked. “Your sister?” he asked, excitement clear on his face. 

Adrianne pushed the door fully open with a flourish, standing with her hands on her hips like some wanna-be superhero. Thank god she didn’t say anything or actually make a move to leave the doorway. 

“I want to meet her!” said Marco. 

My eyes flicked to Adrianne again in a glare. “Maybe another time?” I begged.

I could hear the fear clearly in my voice, I was pretty sure Marco could, too. The question was: could Adrianne? And could she discern the reason for it?

Marco hesitated for a long moment before he smiled. At least he understood I wasn’t quite comfortable introducing him as… well, as what he was to me, just yet. It was probably going to take more than one week of adorable twelve-year-old-style dating for that to happen. I was still just a little afraid.

He sighed. “Another time.”

“Sorry,” I muttered, and I really meant it. Marco deserved more than that. He deserved more than being hidden away like a secret. And, right then, I was determined he would get it from me. Eventually.

“Whenever is fine,” he replied. “Anyway, I should go before Max finds his way onto a bus out of town. I’ll talk to you soon?”

“Yeah, soon,” I said and ended to call.

The moment I did, I realised something: Marco had two brothers, how did he know it had been Max who’d called?

I shook the thought away. It wasn’t important right then. 

I looked up at Adrianne. She just looked back as if she hadn’t come into my room without so much as a knock. 

She was the first to look away but, even then, it was only to stride across my room, yank my cupboard door open, and begin preening herself in front of my mirror. She’d brought a large bag of cosmetics with her, I finally noticed. 

“What are you doing?” I snapped.

“Getting ready,” she replied. “Who was that?”

“You’ve been getting ready for the last four hours. Surely you can’t have anything left to do,” I said, ignoring her question.

“Jean, Jean, Jean,” she sighed. “My naïve little brother…” 

She never did give me any explanation but I hadn’t given her one either, so perhaps we were even.

“Do you really have to do that in here?” I said, pulling my laptop back onto my knees and tucking my Tim Tams out of her line of sight, so I could to begin the art-supplies search again.

Adrianne still stood before my mirror as if she belonged, one hand with some sort of black-looking cosmetic pot of goo clasped between her fingers. 

“Sure, I do,” she replied. “Your mirror’s bigger. And the lighting’s better.”

I rolled my eyes. “You couldn’t use the bathroom?”

She froze, pot of goo still in one hand, and slowly turned to me in exaggerated disgust. “Are you kidding? The light’s overhead in there.  _ Overhead,  _ Jean! Your face ends up looking so weird if you put makeup on in a room with such strong overhead lights.” She turned back to the mirror. “Geez,  _ amateur _ .”

“Well, sorry for not being a professional make-up putter onner.”

“Artist. Make-up artist.” Even though she corrected me, she didn’t sound particularly interested herself. “You sure you don’t want to come with me?”

That was the twelfth time she’d invited me.

“And spend all night looking after you and your friends? No thanks.”

“Shame, I could have used you to pull chicks. Your face is the only decent part about you, after all.”

She looked over her shoulder to gauge my reaction. 

I was pretty much floored. Did that mean what I thought it meant? 

She laughed. Was she going to turn this into a joke? It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny at all. Especially with the last week I’d had -- all cutesy hand-holding and anxiously trying to figure out my own.... whatever it was.

_ Don’t try and understand it, Jean,  _ I told myself.

“Oh!” she said at last, turning back to the mirror and trying to hold back her laughter long enough to keep a steady hand. “Your reaction was the best! I should have told you sooner!”

It wasn’t a joke. It really did mean what I thought it meant.

_ Play it cool, Jean. Don’t say something stupid. _

“How long have you known?” Like that. That was a stupid thing to say. Fuck.

Adrianne smacked her lips in a loud pop. I could only assume that noise meant she’d finished. She put the cap back on whatever cosmetic was in her hand and dropped it into the tiny bag dangling from her shoulder. 

“Since I was sixteen,” she said finally, plopping down into my desk chair. The momentum rolled her a good two metres across the floor.

“Why you’re telling me this now?” I quickly ran the numbers through my head. Evidently I was not quite as quick with numbers as Marco. “Six years after the fact?”

She shrugged. “It never came up.”

“Do Mum and Dad know?”

She scoffed. “It’s not like this is something I can just drop in casual conversation,” she said, completely ignoring the fact that she’d just done exactly that, “and the last time we had a ‘serious talk’ was when I was fourteen and Mum pressed a pack of tampons and a prescription for the pill into my hand.”

I sighed. Of course. This family. 

“Why? You reckon I should tell them?” she said.

I hesitated for only a second before replying. I had nothing to lose, right? Besides, I’d promised myself I’d grow some balls and introduce Marco to my family eventually. This could be the first step. So, I just closed my eyes and jumped, trusting there to be a bungee there to let me bounce back up again.

“Just wondering if they’d be upset that they won’t be getting any grandchildren.” My voice was far too fragile. Far too weak. It was supposed to be a sharp, witty comment not a pathetic beg for comfort.

“You too?” Adrianne seemed unfazed by my confession. She was  just fiddling with the pens on my desk, making a pair of them waltz up and down her thigh.

I shrugged. Words were awkward. They stuck in my throat and didn’t want to move. What was this fear? What was I afraid of? Wasn’t I supposed to have nothing to lose?

“Dunno yet. At the moment, we’re looking at a 50/50 split.” That was cryptic. I hoped she understood. I really didn’t want to explain. And Marco was really still alone on his side of the split so it was more like a 95/5 split. Besides, did I actually like Marco because he was a man or did I like Marco because Jeanne had liked Marco and now me and every one of the Mes from here on out will be stuck liking Marco and all the future Marcos until the end of time? I mean, that didn’t exactly change the way current-me felt, and I was still kind of high on the fact that we’d somehow gotten together in the first place, but it would at least explain why I’d never felt attracted to men before meeting him. 

No, I wouldn’t think about it. It didn’t matter. I liked Marco. I really liked Marco. And he apparently liked me enough to put up with me. Right at that moment, I hadn’t even thought of the possibility of leaving him, we’d only been together for a week, so there would be no need to think about my preferences for ‘the next one’ any time soon. I would stick with cutesy hand-holding forever and never think about why things were the way they were. 

“So... bi, then?” Adrianne had to ask and bring me straight back to the problem. 

Why did I ever think this conversation was a good idea? I didn’t even know what I was yet. I didn’t want to think about it.

“Dunno,” I said again, really hoping she didn’t push any further. “Does it really need a label?”

“Probs not.” The pens did a pirouette on her kneecap. “Love is love, right?”

I sighed in relief.

“Love is love,” I agreed.

“So Mum and Dad may get some grandkids yet,” she said with a wicked grin.

I rolled my eyes and kicked the base of the chair so it slid across the floor and  into my closed wardrobe doors. Adrianne gave an exaggerated ‘ _ oomph _ !’ as she hit the door.

“Go on, then. Don’t you have chicks to pull?” I asked, wanting her gone and this conversation... not  _ forgotten _ but definitely not happening currently so I could push the problem aside and not have to think about it again for a long time. My ageless technique for avoiding trouble.

Adrianne grinned back at me. Then she checked the time on her phone, swore once, and hurried out my door with nothing more than a wave.

 

**

 

_ “Where is he?” I wake to the sound of Papa’s voice ricocheting through the apartment.  _

_ It is morning but the air is grey with rain and I cannot bring myself to get out of bed despite Papa’s yelling. He slams my door open. I can see Maman trembling behind him, uttering soft requests for him to calm himself.  _

_ “Maman!” I cry as he swots her aside and she falls heavily against the wall. I never make it to her, though because he grabs the collar of my nightgown and hoists my face up to his.  _

_ “Where is he?” he spits again and I feel my throat close up. _

_ I can taste the spirits on his breath.  _

_ “Where is whom?” I ask softly. _

_ He drops me on the floor and smacks me across the face with the newspaper in his hand. Then he smooths out the paper with forced calm, his hands still trembling with rage, and stabs a grubby finger at an article in the corner. He leans down so his face is in mine again. _

_ I try to clear my mind enough to read the article. ‘ _ First piece from unknown artist sells for record price _ ’ is the title. Everything makes sense. Marco had done just as I’d told him to. He had sold his paintings. He had made a name for himself. But rather than being resigned to the fact that there was nothing to oppose to anymore, Papa seemed to be infuriated by his success. _

_ “Tell me, Jeanne. Where is he?” _

_ I am not proud to admit that, in my fear, I tell him the address. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reeeeeeeeeaaaaally not happy with this chapter >:(  
> I've actually had it written for a while but been reluctant to post it. It's so clunky. It's so obvious that these are all the bits where I freaked out and went 'oh, crap! They need to know this before this can happen!'. I've definitely fallen back on my old habit of advancing every plot point through dialogue... 
> 
> Also, about Jean's sexuality:  
> I'm in a bit of a weird spot here because I, personally, abhor labels but at the same time, under-representation of bisexuals in media pisses me off. I'm a contradictory person... And then there's the fact that Jean's still in denial about how uncomfortable he is with the whole idea and... in this situation, he wouldn't want a label on it, right? Fuck, I don't know and I'm writing this thing.
> 
> Also, stuff has been happening in the Franceyverse in the last few chapters! What do you think??
> 
> The next chapter is probably going to be long. We'll still be on the Easter weekend and we'll be remaining in this character-building-before-sudden-plot-development stage for just a little while longer so hang in there.  
> 'Till next time,  
> Ocean.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Easter Sunday at last. Jean takes a step out of gross, cute, DIY shopping Wonderland and has to come to grips with the reality of dating a man all the while dealing with his emotionally repressed family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Australian Things:  
> 1\. April - remember that April is the middle of Autumn in Aus. Also, please over look the fact that Easter Sunday this year was the 27th of March. Usually it's in April sometime, dammit!  
> 2\. 'Jez' - This is short of Jeremy. I know two 'Jez's. I was tempted to call Uncle Murray 'Uncle Muzza', in the same fashion, but I only know one Muzza and he's a bit weird so... I can't imagine normal people legitimately taking up that name...  
> 3\. Bob Katter - Aus politician famous for his very country priorities and his out-dated views. The paraphrased quote comes from an episode of Q & A where Josh Thomas rips him apart over it. It's on YouTube. Go look it up. Serves him bloody right.
> 
> I think that's it. If I've missed something or you're confused about something, let me know :)

Sometimes it felt like my family was just going through the motions. Child is leaving the country for two weeks -- must see child off at the airport. Parent has big success at work -- must congratulate parent. Child is halfway through uni-project and has no money to continue -- must grudgingly offer up money. 

I don’t know why I thought my family was so different to others. These were things that surely most families did, they were normal. But maybe that was the problem. They were normal, they were expected courses of action for our characters (The Mother, The Father, The Sister, The Brother), and so we carried them out. 

Maybe that’s why they always felt so hollow. There was no real meaning to us waving Adrianne off as she disappeared through the departure gate, or when we rose a glass to Mum when she signed a big contract, or when Dad quietly slipped me another two hundred dollars to finish my project, even if he frowned while doing it. They were obligations. They didn’t mean anything. And if those large-ish gestures meant nothing, then the ordinary laughter and conversations were less than nothing. 

I wonder if that’s why I’d always struggled to talk to them -- my family. Because I was scared I’d just get a standard, cookie-cutter reply, rather than what they actually felt. I’d much rather they tell me what I needed to hear, even if it was ‘you’re being an idiot’, than what they thought I wanted to hear.

Still, that was the only family I had. ‘You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family,’ as they say. I was stuck with them and, truthfully, I didn’t actually mind. I loved my family, emotionally repressed, caricatures of themselves that they were… 

 

My parents were playing their roles as The Mother and The Father perfectly on Easter Sunday morning. Dad was out the back on the verandah, slowly burning things on the barbeque as he stared at the sausages and kebabs catching fire on the grill (not that all that careful watching was actually helping, they were still turning to ash). Mum was in the kitchen ‘fixing a salad’. My own character was equally set. I was still ‘the angsty teenage son’, despite having left my teen years behind. Like I said: fixed characters. There was no escaping who I had to be. And, as the angsty teenage son, I slept until almost noon before I sautered downstairs and demanded to be fed. 

 

The Relatives began to arrive soon after I emerged. Both my parents came from big families, my Dad was the second youngest of eight and my Mum was the eldest of six, so the stream of relatives seemed never-ending. Uncle Murray and Aunt Beryl and their four kids. Uncle Jez, Aunt Tanya and their three boys. Aunt Gabby and Uncle Joel, their five children and their one living stink-and-noise machine. The list went on and on and on and on. To be honest, I’m not even sure if I could name them all. Probably not. Too many cousins. Probably too many aunts and uncles, too. 

They all played their roles, as well. They cried out in joy when they saw me, said how much I’d grown, wrapped me in their arms and crushed me almost to death. They all pulled out the dish they’d brought with them, a plate covered in a tea-towel, with a flourish and laid it on the table. They all fell easily into small talk into their groups, prearranged by matching personal prejudices. 

And all I could think was: all of these relatives are straight. 

Murray and Beryl and Jez and Tanya and Gabby and Joel -- all the aunts and uncles were in strictly hetero relationships. If any of my eight quadrillion cousins were anything else, no one had ever mentioned it. 

Did that mean I was actually alone on this weird, minority-group side of the fence? Or did it mean that we were so unaccommodating that we wouldn’t accept anything else? After all, statistically, at least a few of those eight quadrillion cousins couldn’t be straight. But I’d never heard anything to suggest it. We didn’t talk about it. 

What was it that Bob Katter said that one time? ‘There are no gays in North Queensland’? Something like that… Well, it seemed there were no gays in the Kirschstein family, either. 

Both statements were probably equally true, in the sense that they were both entirely false. 

But, perhaps, people in North Queensland didn’t talk about it either. I didn’t know.

So what did I do? Putting aside my own confusion for the moment -- no, I can’t put aside the confusion. It was the whole problem. 

Was I still straight and Marco was just some weird exception to the rule or was I something new entirely? That question kept popping up. 

_ What am I? _

Human, yes. Male, yes -- both biologically and personally. Selfish, yes. Stubborn, yes. I was all of those things. I knew who I was. I just didn’t know my own sexuality. 

Did it matter? Probably not. ‘Love is love’, as Adrianne said. I didn’t have to actually reach a conclusion until the time came to look for ‘the next one’ and, with any luck, that wouldn’t be any time soon. It didn’t matter, I’d decided it didn’t matter, I was absolutely positive that it didn’t matter -- until I looked around my living room crowded with relatives and saw nothing but straight couples. 

_ There are no gays in the Kirschstein family _ , my mind replayed the modified quote. 

I’m sorry, Marco. I’d promised myself I’d introduce you properly eventually. I’d taken a step towards that when I told Adrianne. But maybe I couldn’t. I don’t know if I could take being the odd one out, the rarity, in my own family. When I stepped out of Wonderland and had to face the reality of actually dating a man, my first instinct was to run away.

God, that’s awful of me. Especially when I knew Marco had spent the last five years or more blaming himself for his parents’ divorce. He had to live with that guilt and self-blame -- the same guilt and self-blame I’d wished I could lift from his shoulders -- but I was allowed to take the easy way out and hide? 

_ Selfish, Jean. You really are selfish. _

I was an awful person but, for some completely inexplicable reason, he liked me. Marco -- the most amazingly brilliant and beautiful person on the planet -- like  _ me? _ So maybe being an awful person was actually okay, if that’s the sort of person someone so perfect likes.

He’ll forgive me for running away, won’t he? He’s Marco. Of course he would.

 

**

 

_ Marco wasn’t there. In fact, when Papa went to murder the man I wanted to someday marry, his entire studio wasn’t there. His neighbourhood was gone and an army of builders had taken its place. Papa tells me this when he arrives back home, fuming and shouting for Maman to bring him something to drink. I know that even getting blind drunk will not calm his anger. Rather, it will only make it worse. _

_ He shakes me by the arm. “Did you lie to me, Jeanne? Did you try to hide him from me? That man has dirtied your name forever and you still try to protect him?” _

_ I cannot understand what Marco has done wrong. He sold his paintings, like he’d promised he would. He would go far. Why did that mean he had dirtied me? _

_ I stumble over my words as I try to explain my confusion to Papa. _

_ “What do you mean, you don’t understand?” he shouts and I bite my lip so hard it draws blood as I flinch. “He has cemented your face, the face of Ensel Blumstein’s only daughter, as a painter’s model, practically a harlot! I cannot undo this, Jeanne. I hope you are satisfied.” _

_ I could tell him that that’s what I had wanted. I could tell him that now, now that I have been apparently so disgraced, he could have no more qualms about marrying me off to a penniless painter. But I don’t. I stand in silence as Papa storms through the apartment, breaking anything within reach. _

 

_ ** _

 

Aunt Elsie’s kids arrived late, as usual, though they would say they got there right on time. By the clock, they were forty-five minutes late but, by activity in the house, they arrived just in time. Everyone else had already arrived and the possible small talk topics were starting to run thin. Just then, ‘right on time’, Elsie’s kids came through the door carrying their usual procession of musical instruments. And, was that an amp? And a mic… Whoa, they were serious this year. 

Ben, the eldest by a fair margin, just dumped his stuff in a corner and left to get a drink from the kitchen. Dan and Hitch, the twins, stayed with their stuff a little longer but they certainly weren’t actually helping. Dan sat on the amp, shouting down his brother to get him a drink too, laughing at something Hitch had said. Occasionally, he’d give a glance to poor Mick, the youngest, who was doing all the real work. Mick was the quiet one who played piano (although, also guitar and the drums), knew how the sound system worked like the back of his hand and absolutely refused to sing. 

I sat on the back of the couch, trying to look like I was part of the conversation going on between Uncle Jez and my dad. I didn’t even know what the current topic was. Something to do with the price of real estate? Probably, knowing my dad. Yet, despite my attempts to look innocuous, Hitch still managed to catch my eye and lifted two fingers to her temple in salute. 

I would be getting cornered at some point that afternoon. 

Just then, Mick finally finished coiling wires -- or whatever setting up the sound system actually involved -- and tapped his sister on the shoulder. They all cast a questioning glance towards the kitchen where Ben had still yet to remerge. That was typical, though. The only time you’d ever catch him playing ‘big-brother’ was when it was of some benefit to himself. Or when he could show off his singing voice. 

Hitch rolled her eyes and said something to her brothers behind her. Dan nodded emphatically with a grin, hoisting his bass from the floor onto his lap, still sitting on the amp. He laid it flat across his legs, strings down, so I knew he wasn’t going to play it but, rather, use it as a drum. Most likely, Dan’s main role in the song would be back-up vocals like usual. No one can find the perfect harmony like Daniel Dreyse. Mick stepped away from the keyboard (which he had brought instead of just using our piano, for whatever reason) and picked up Ben’s guitar with only a slightly nervous look in the eldest brother’s direction. 

A chord -- I couldn’t say which one -- and then Hitch’s voice, half amazingly beautiful and half raspy as it always was, a voice made for jazz and indie music, filled the air. The sound was sudden and half a dozen conversations stopped mid-sentence at it. The smiles appeared at Elsie’s ‘talented young ones’ and at how ‘they can always be counted on to bring some life to any event’. But then the song went on and the smiles faded. Not only did it have the word ‘sex’ in it several times but… God, the face Hitch made while singing the lines, ‘I don’t love my family, I think they’re boring,’ probably wilted the whole room. Yet, even still, no one could doubt her voice or the skill of her brothers. No matter how much Hitch must have wanted to shock this parade of relatives with her song choice, they were only momentarily stunned before the smiles were back, carrying the praise with them.

I sighed. This was it. This was my whole weekend: real estate prices, big gay-freakouts and more-talented-than-me cousins. What I wouldn’t have given to drag Marco along with me. At least then I would have someone I actually wanted to talk to. And someone to tell me I was overthinking things.

As fate would have it, my phone buzzed just then and, sure enough, it was Marco.

I made my excuses to my dad and escaped to the stairs, tucking myself into the shadow of the bannister, before I opened it.

A photo of Ymir in their backyard, the biggest Easter egg I have ever seen hoisted over her head and a face of utter achievement.

**Guess who won our Easter egg hunt?**

_ of course she did. _

_ no one else had a chance with ymir around… _

**Of course not :)**

**What about you? Are you guys having a hunt this year?**

The younger cousins had already had their hunt that morning and Hitch’s annual spirits-hunt (where the winner was the one who could find and then drink the most bottles of booze hidden in the garden) wouldn’t start until near midnight. 

I leaned around the bannister to snap a photo of the cousins and sent it in reply. Hitch had disappeared and I was grateful for my semi-hiding place that kept her from tracking me down. Ben had reappeared in her place, though, drawn by the possibility of exhibiting his own talent. 

_ are you kidding me marco? our holidays are just a never ending gig for my cousins _

_ i reckon id rather be in your shoes right now _

**Oh? What are they playing?**

_ no idea. something by the libertines? _

_ not sure _

The song changed. I laughed.

_ pfft! marco you’ll never guess what they’re playing now _

**What is it?**

I switched to voice memos for a moment to record a good thirty seconds of Ben’s voice and Mick’s rhythmic keyboard and sent it away. Dan was nowhere to be seen.

**Coming Down? You’re kidding?**

_ i told you id only ever heard my cousins play it _

**They’re pretty good.**

**They look like you, too.**

I snorted. He must have checked the photo again.

_ i will send them word of your compliment _

**Do you sing too, then?**

I didn’t know how to reply to that without sounding more rude than even I was willing to be. So I just took a selfie of me looking completely and totally incredulous and sent that by way of a reply.

**Right. Of course you don’t.**

Could I hear sarcasm in Marco’s text?

**That would be uncool. And we all know Jean Kirschstein is allowed to be anything but uncool.**

That was definitely sarcasm.

_ you are the only person i know who can sound so sarcastic through text alone _

**:) It’s my secret talent.**

“Who ya texting?”

Fuck.

“No one, Heather,” I said. 

_ Sorry, Marco. I promise you’re not no one. _

Hitch snorted and plopped herself down beside me on the stairs. 

“ _ Please _ ,” she said, “feel free to drop the ‘Heather’ whenever you want.”

I just shrugged. The story behind her transition from ‘Heather’ to ‘Hitch’ was a simple one. Apparently, she’d overheard some girls referring to her as ‘Heather the bitch’ behind her back in high school, turned around and said, “What about Hitch? Doesn’t it just flow better?” and that was that. It stuck and she took it up as her own personal badge. 

Poor Aunt Elsie, though, when she heard the name.

“Oh, my Heather,” she’d gushed, “her friends have started to call her ‘Hitch’ simply because they feel she’s so lovely, she’s sure to be married first.”

No one’s had the heart to correct her in the six years since.

“But seriously, I guess I don’t really need to ask who you’re texting,” Hitch said. “Anyone would be more entertaining than staying here.” She yawned to reiterate her point.

“Hey, at least you have siblings to talk to,” I replied.

“Where’s Adrianne?”

“Denmark?” To be honest, I still hadn’t bothered to ask. “Or maybe Norway. She’s on some architecture trip for uni.”

“Lucky cow…”

We sat in silence -- or as much silence as there will ever be during a family Easter gathering -- for a moment or two before my phone buzzed again.

I resisted the urge to check it but it didn’t matter in the end. Hitch reached into my pocket without a shred of hesitation and pulled it out.

She took one look at the screen and burst out laughing.

I snatched it back. A tiny photo of Marco, the preview of the message, lit up the screen. He’d broken Ymir’s champion egg in half and somehow fashioned it into some sort of crown. He was grinning widely but, conversely, his message read  **‘Things are quickly getting out of hand…’**

“Oh my God,” said Hitch beside me and I quickly wiped a dopey grin off my face. I hadn’t even realised I was wearing it. “You like him. This Easter-egg-hat-guy.”

I couldn’t reply.

_ There are no gays in the Kirschstein family _ .

“You do. Are you guys going out?”

“Ahh… urgh…” That was the best I could manage.

The song had changed again but I barely noticed. 

Hitch just smiled and slapped me (probably harder than she realised) on the arm. “Oh, lie down before you hurt yourself. Don’t worry about it. It’ll be our little secret. Besides,” she said, “You didn’t break my mum’s heart over the whole ‘Hitch thing’ so I’d say we’re about even with this.”

“No one broke your mum’s heart over the ‘Hitch thing’,” I managed to say. “She still doesn’t know.” 

“True. So I guess now I owe one less person than I did a minute ago.” 

Her face changed and it took me a moment to realise she was just listening to the music. Ben was still singing but someone was backing him up with a harmony. My money was still on Dan, considering Mick was more likely to drown a toddler than sing in public. A shame, really. He had my favourite voice out of the three brothers.

I swallowed thickly. “He says you’re good, by the way. At singing, I mean.”

“What?” said Hitch.

“Easter-egg-hat-guy,” I clarified. “He asked what I was up to so I sent him a recording of you guys singing.”

“I haven’t sung since  _ Sad Rude Future Dude _ ,” she said.

“What?” Now it was my turn to be confused.

“The first song,” she clarified in turn. “And I’m pretty sure you were talking to your dad and Jez the whole time so it’s not me he thinks is good. But I’ll take the compliment all the same.”

I nodded.

Hitch suddenly burst into song. “ _ No, I ain’t wasting no more time! _ ” 

I looked at her.

“What? That line’s fun to sing.”

I just shrugged. 

“So, what’s he like? This Easter-egg-hat-guy?”

“Marco. His name’s Marco. And…” I had to be careful what I said. I mean, I couldn’t very well list everything about him, that would not only be creepy but would also definitely give away just how much I  _ did  _ like him. And, despite my best efforts, I still couldn’t bring myself to do that just yet. “He’s a med-student.”

“So he’s smart, then.”

“Yeah… crazy smart.”

“What about family? He live on campus?” She gasped dramatically. “Don’t tell me you guys are roommates? That would be perfect. Like something out of a rom-com but more gay.”

“You having fun with this?” I snapped.

“Of course,” she replied.

I sighed. “Is it possible to change the subject at all?”

“Oh, come on! Consider this payment for me keeping my mouth shut.”

“I thought you said you owed me?”

“Meh!” she scoffed. “Then just tell me ‘cause I want to know. Really, who is ‘Heather the bitch’ going to tell anyway?”

I peeked around the bannister to our full living room.

“Other than our whole extended family,” she said.

I sighed. There was no escaping her, anyway. “Family, right? Ah…” I thought for a moment. “He’s the middle of five children.”

“He’d fit in here, then. Big families and all. I mean, other than you and Adrianne. You guys are tiny compared to the rest of us.”

“Yeah,” I said dumbly. “Two brothers, two sisters -- one older and one younger for both. He doesn’t live on campus. He lives with some friends a couple blocks north of uni. So, no, we’re not roommates. You’ll have to give up on your dream gay rom-com.”

“Damn.” Despite her reply, she didn’t sound particularly put out. “So if you’re not roommates, how did you guys meet?”

Thankfully, I was spared retelling the whole story by Dan sticking his head into the hall. And while, ‘he walked into my room without knocking, looking for my absent dorm-mate, while I was cleaning in my underwear,’ was marginally better than ‘I was essentially sold to him the moment I turned fifteen as a painter’s model in 1845,’ I didn’t think either were quite what Hitch was looking for. 

I hadn’t even noticed the music had fallen silent.

“Aich?” said Dan, calling her by that strange nickname she never let anyone else get away with. “Ah! There you are. I thought I heard your voice over here. Nan’s starting to grouch at us to play something she knows so I figured I’d come grab you and we could play  _ Red Sails _ or something?”

Hitch groaned as she pushed herself to her feet. “Not bloody  _ Red Sails _ .” Then she turned as if just remembering I was there. “See’ya ‘round, Genie-Baby. I expect a full report later. This is golden,” she said to me and disappeared around the banister and through into the living room. 

Probably what she actually thought was golden was seeing me so uncomfortable as I struggled through her nosy questions. I could still hear her voice as she walked away, slowly melding into the cacophony of relatives chattering. 

“Seriously, Nan should just man-up a bit and accept the fact that her music is boring. It’s always the same five bloody songs with her. Maybe we could…” Her voice was finally swallowed up by the crowd.

Dan’s voice, still lilting a little with laughter, came through the microphone a moment later. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to the stage, the beautiful Sarcastic Songbird herself, Heather Dreyse.”

I leant back against the stairs with a sigh, glancing again at the photo of Marco’s egg-crown, just as the sombre tones of  _ Red Sails in the Sunset _ started to float throughout the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been promising my cousin that I'd include him in a story for years so Jean's cousins (Aunt Elsie's kids, at any rate) are actually based on my own cousins with Dan being a very loose interpretation of that particular cousin. Thing is, right, that what I actually wanted to take from his character was the way that he always says blatent lies without ever actually expecting anyone to believe him. Like, 'ah, yes, carpentry... I was a carpenter for fifteen years when I was younger' (says the fourteen year old boy...) But Dan doesn't really stick around long enough, or say enough for that to come out...  
> As they're based on my cousins, the actual playlist that Hitch and Co. sing is partly based on what my own cousins play at family events (whether to satisfy my nana or not), partly on what I think Hitch would like and just partly on what I would like to hear in the voice I imagine her having.  
> The playlist (up to the point the story leaves off) is:  
> Sad Rude Future Dude (Ballpark Music)  
> Can't Stand Me Now (The Libertines)  
> Coming Down (Ballpark Music)  
> I Stand Corrected (Vampire Weekend)  
> Someday (The Strokes)  
> Red Sails in the Sunset (the version I have is by Nat King Cole but I don't know if that's the original artist..?)
> 
> Golly, this is getting to be a long AN. I promise I'm almost done.   
> So, the big gay-freakout happened. I'm pretty sure that's an obligatory part of any JM fic... I also apologise for the /incredibly/ inconsistent voice. I'm really all over the place...   
> I know I said last chapter 'the next chapter will be a long one' but I was actually thinking of the one after... So the NEXT chapter after THIS one will be long. Like, really long. I might have to split it. But it should be happy. Hopefully. Maybe. Angst is just so much easier to write...
> 
> Well, I'll see you then! Hopefully it'll be soon. 'till next time,
> 
> Ocean.
> 
> (P.S It's actually my 21st birthday today.)


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco plays hockey. Jean meets Max properly. Connie learns about Jeanne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did end up splitting this chapter in two... So this is the first of two 'Jean is happy' chapters. This one is slightly less fluffy than the next one, if only because Marco spends most of the chapter on the field and, therefore, not actually with Jean. I've finished the next chapter and will post it in the next couple of days. Just give me a while to read through it...

_ I am thirty-three and unmarried. Papa is growing increasingly angry. He doesn’t understand why I refused offers from his business partners or from the man he had once gone to school with. It had nothing to do with their age. Eventually, the offers stopped coming but I do not mind. I have Marco. We see each other secretly. I have been allowed to leave the house for longer and longer stretches of time as the years passed, I grew older, and the penniless painter did not reappear before our family. So now I can spend most of the day with him without attracting suspicion.  _

_ I invent a friend, Marie, who I go to see most days because her mother is ill and she cannot look after her alone. Papa has stopped caring. I am too old to be of use to him and he is too old to scare me.  _

_ He sits in his chair most days, too broken from booze and brawling to move. I don’t mind. Maman doesn’t mind either, though she herself is getting rather old. His broken body means we are free, or at least a little freer.  _

_ I kiss Maman on the cheek like always as I stop in the vestibule to put on my hat. _

_ “Are you going to visit Marie again, Jeanne dear?” she asks with that new twinkle in her eye. She has always known who Marie really is, though I don’t remember ever telling her. _

_ “Yes, Maman, it has been cold this week and her mother is still very poorly,” I reply with my own smile. _

_ Maman tells me to be careful on the streets and I hurry down the stairs from the house.  _

_ We have moved again. The reconstruction that demolished Marco’s tiny studio reached all the way to our apartment but, by then, Papa had remade his wealth enough to buy a small house only a few minutes’ walk from the centre of Paris. Sometimes I feel guilty that we live such an easy life when poverty has become common again in the city. I like it here more now, despite the increasing number of beggars on the street. It is cleaner. Not everyone agrees with me, though. Marco, for one, can’t stop missing his little studio. I try to remind him how much he hated it when he lived there, how much he hated having to share the space with four other artists, but he doesn’t listen.  _

_ “It was our space,  _ cara mia _ ,” he tells me. “No matter how small or cramped, it was a space where I could be with you without worrying about anything. We need a space like that again.” _

 

**

 

I drove slowly down the North Trost street in Marco’s truck. The GPS had already given me the ‘you have reached your destination’ line and I still couldn't see the house. 

Number 19. I was looking for number 19. A low, flat, grey thing with a bright orange door and next-to-no garden, according to Marco. 

I don't know how many years it'd been since he was last there but number 19 had an amazing garden, when I finally found it. A perfect lawn and a little gravel path leading to the door between two rows of brightly coloured flowers. Three tall trees framed the house, their branches hanging low and their leaves growing orange at the edges as if rimmed by embers. The bright flowers didn't help to hide the drab colour of the house, though, which was rendered in a light grey, just as Marco had said it would be. If anything, they accentuated it. At the bottom of the gravel path, leaning against the mailbox, slouched Max, looking every bit like the photo Marco had shown me.

He was on the phone when I pulled up and didn't seem to notice the car. 

“I know, but are you saying I'm supposed to just climb in after this guy, no questions asked? I don't know if I'm really okay with the idea… It's probably just going to be really awkward and--” He finally noticed me. 

I climbed out of the truck and walked around to the curb. 

“I gotta go,” he said into the phone. “ _My_ _ride_ is here.” Then he hung up. Apparently sarcasm ran in the Bodt family. 

I tossed the keys in my palm. “Yeah, I'm not too happy with this situation either but apparently Marco has no sense of stranger danger.” 

He really didn’t. I’d been nursing Connie back to health (he was still very hungover at two in the afternoon) when my phone pinged with a Facebook message. And by nursing, I mean: calling him names and ‘accidently’ dropping loud things on the ground but still occasionally getting him a glass of water.

You’re coming to hockey, right?

I didn’t even know hockey was happening. But I supposed it was the weekend. When else would it be on? 

I still didn’t want to go, though. Even if staying where I was meant putting up with Connie’s grouching and the sound of Bert talking to his physics report in German coming through the walls. 

**could i meet you afterwards?**

Yeah, I suppose that’s fine. 

I was just hoping you’d be free a bit before the game.

**what for?**

Oh, I’m just stuck at work. Nac says he can give me a lift straight there but I promised Max I’d bring him along.

**so what are you gonna do?**

Jean…

**what?**

I have a favour to ask....

**no.**

**you’re not thinking…**

**no marco. I won’t do it.**

Please! You can use my car? The keys are in the bowl by the front door.

You should probably know by now that I am incapable of saying no to Marco. 

Max was still shifting nervously in front of me. At least  _ one  _ of the brothers had some sense of social boundaries.

I tried to smile and reassure him but Max just looked more terrified with every passing second. 

“Sorry…” he finally managed to mumble. 

“Ready to go?”

Max laughed but it sounded fake in every possible way. “Yeah, we should probably get out of here before my dad comes out.”

“What's the rush?” I said as I ambled back around to the driver’s side. “It's not like he's going to break my legs or anything.”

Max was already in the passenger seat and staring at me wide-eyed as if he couldn't believe I was so innocent. As if his dad really would break my legs first, and ask questions later. 

“Yeah, we should probably get out of here,” I agreed as I started the engine.

Just as Max had predicted, the car ride was awkward. It was silent and not the sort of comforting silence people tended to look for in close friends and lovers, the sort of silence that was supposed to be natural between family members but I’d never managed to find. There was none of that silence. It was heavy and thick and awkward. I could hear him chewing on something -- his cheek or tongue or nothing at all -- anxiously as his eyes flicked back and forth as if he could find a topic of conversation if he just looked hard enough. I had given up on finding one fairly quickly. I was driving and that was enough of a distraction.

But suddenly a topic popped into my head. I ran with it before it could vanish, before I could question if it was rude or not, for Max’s sake as much as my own.

“So,” I said, trying to sound confident, “you can’t drive?”

Yeah, that sounded rude. 

“I can,” replied Max. “My doctor just said I shouldn’t anymore.”

I could work with that. That could be the segue to further conversation.

“Oh yeah?” I prompted.

Opposite to my hopes, Max’s face completely shut down. He wasn’t going to talk about why his doctor told him not to drive. His eyes began to flick again, searching for an escape route. I glanced away from the road to him again as the silence dragged on. His eyes shot open with realisation. It seemed he’d finally found a topic. 

I looked back at the road with relief.

The relief didn’t last long.

“You’re sleeping with my brother, aren’t you?” he said without a hint of shame.

I actually spat all over the steering wheel (sorry Marco) in my shocked spluttering. 

I wasn’t, actually. Not yet, at any rate. But I suppose, at some point...

God, what was I doing freaking out about my sexuality when the possibility of having sex with Marco in the near future was only something to look forward to?

“You’re kind of different to his last boyfriend,” Max continued, unfazed, as he stared out the window. 

Apparently he was more comfortable with this topic than the heavy silence we’d been in before. 

“I wonder if his taste changed…”

I swallowed down my own awkwardness. “I can’t tell if you’re insulting me or not,” I said casually.

I could pretend this topic didn’t bother me either.

Max’s eyes didn’t shift from the window. “Oh, no,” he said, “it’s not an insult. His last boyfriend was really weird. Kept trying to get me to tell him about my day.”

“I wouldn’t say that was weird.”

“No, no, this was all the time.” He finally looked away from the window but only to stare at the truck’s ceiling. “And you know how when someone asks how your day was, you just say, ‘alright’ and then they leave it at that?” 

I nodded.

“He didn’t do that. He kept asking. He needed all the details.” His voice dropped an octave. “‘Oh, you had chemistry today, did you? Was it a laboratory class or theory? What was the experiment? What chemicals did you use? Were you just following instructions or did you understand why you were doing what you were doing?’”

I scoffed and flicked a glance in his direction again. “Sounds exhausting.”

Max actually smiled. It was small and nothing like Marco’s, but he definitely smiled. 

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “It was.”

Max slipped back into his awkward silence, though now somewhat less nervous, so I was only left with my thoughts to entertain me.

To be honest, I didn’t particularly want to hear about Marco’s exes but, if they were all that exhausting to be around, I was confident in at least being more tolerable than that. I could probably rest easy. Or maybe not? Maybe Marco liked being the responsible one who pulled all the weight in the relationship. Maybe I was going to be dumped tomorrow. I wonder if I’d be able to glue myself back together… I’d have to think about ‘the next one’ then. I’d have to reach a conclusion on where I stood in regards to my own preferences. Then it wouldn’t matter how okay I’d be with sleeping with Marco.

 

**

The fields weren’t the same ones Armin and I went to last time. But, surprisingly, there was very little difference between the North Coast fields and these in South Trost. 

The Trost South Hockey Club, I found out, was the very same yellow and blue club Marco had lost against the last time I watched him play. They had their club logo printed on the side of their very own gross 70’s brick clubhouse, just like TNCHC did. They had their oval divided into gladiator arenas for six year olds (where the winner was the one who emerged alive from the swarm, armed with nothing more than a hockey stick) by spray painted lines, just like they did at the TNCHC home fields. The oval was ringed with marquee tents filled with parents and officials. No doubt there’d be an equivalent to Armin in one, selling sausages and soft drink. The smell of the sausage sizzle drifted over on the wind.

Somehow, the second time round, the sound of shouting children, cheering parents, the crash of hockey sticks and the crack of the ball, didn’t bother me so much. They were expected. I knew what to expect.

Of course, that didn’t completely stop them from being a fucking awful combination of sounds to hear. Like an out-of-tune orchestra.

“Did Marco tell you a field number?” I asked Max who, despite having his shoulders hunched against the noise, walked comfortably beside me between the fields of children’s games. He was probably used to it, having grown up with a hockey-playing brother.

“South only has four full-sized fields. They’re all over that way.” He pointed to the other end of the field. “We’ll see the North Coast colours soon enough.”

And we did.

This time, Marco noticed us almost immediately. He didn’t leave his team like last time, though. Just raised one arm in the air and shouted a greeting.

His uniform -- the away version, I assumed -- was all mixed up from the last one. Where the home uniform consisted of a white tank, black shorts and orange socks, the away was orange tank, white shorts and black socks. 

I decided almost immediately that the shorts were not fit for public usage. When Marco bent over, an action he performed far too many times while stretching, and they pulled tight across his arse, they were borderline transparent. 

What sort of idiot sets white shorts as part of a uniform? No doubt they’d just get more transparent as the game went on and he soaked them with sweat...

That was my arse now. I’d spent weeks pining over it and I bloody well wasn’t happy with it on full display. 

Max caught the direction of my stare and had to suppress a laugh. 

“Do we want to find a seat?” he said. 

 

Much to my extreme displeasure, Jaeger was at the game. He didn’t have to be there. Annie wasn’t there, therefore Mikasa wasn’t there, therefore Eren had no right to be there. 

He took one look at me, made a face like someone had just served him rotten fish, and turned back to the game.

“What’s with that face?” he said as the starting whistle blew.

“What face?” I replied. “This is just my normal face.”

Had I made a face? 

“You always look so pissed every time you see me,” said Eren.

“Isn’t it the other way round? You always look like you’re about to hurl every time you look at me.”

“Yeah, but you started doing it first,” he insisted.

“As if I did. We spoke for three seconds at Connie’s party and then the next time I saw you, you treated me as if I’d just run over your pet cat.”

“We talked for more than three seconds.”

“Two minutes, then.”

He looked away from the game and stared at me. “We had a whole conversation. You don’t remember?”

Oh, god… was this where that after-midnight-blank was going to come back and bite me in the arse?

“It was after the second game of King’s and before the first game of beer-pong,” he went on, turning back to the game. “You asked me what I was studying. I said, enviro conservation. You told me it didn’t suit me. I told you I was going to save The Reef. You said it was a lost cause. I said we had to at least limit industry in the surrounding area, that that was an achievable goal. You said the government would never let the mines close because they brought too much national wealth… Should I keep going?”

I shrugged. What had I even been worried about? The after-midnight-blank was nothing.

“That just sounds like a normal conversation with me,” I said.

“That’s exactly the problem. You’re a cynical prick.”

“And you’re naive toddler.”

“Well, then,” he said, “I’m glad we got that cleared up.”

A sudden clash of sticks came just then and both of our attention snapped back to the field. 

Nac, his orange captain’s armband flashing in the sun, reached out desperately as the ball slipped away from him and into the possession of the other team. TNCHC was up 1-0 but the game had only been going ten minutes or so. Their opponent, West Trost in red and green, were fast. The ball that was Nac’s four seconds ago was already fifteen metres up the field. I could see Marco and his captain sprinting back towards defence as the West number 15 drew closer and closer to our goal. 

Max’s arms tightened around his knees in dread and Eren had crawled to kneeling without seeming to notice.

Nac reached number 15 first, sneaking his stick in to nab the ball in that incredibly precise way he had. But his opponent easily flicked the ball away from the captain and towards the mid-field where another red and green player picked it up. Marco slid as he changed directions and sprinted towards the ball, not really going for the tackle but hoping to at least put some pressure on the other team. It worked and the West player hurriedly pushed the ball away, unwilling to face a wild Marco baring down on him. 

The rest of the North Coast team had caught up by then. But that was to be their undoing. The ball flew straight and fast across the grass. The North Coast players were running too hard to change directions. The ball found a foot. I recognised the ref’s signal from the last match as a penalty corner was called. 

Eren had his face in his hands.

“Dammit…” he growled. 

I looked over at him. “By the way,” I said. The game had lulled while three or four players donned protective masks to take the corner. “Why are you here?”

“Huh?” He glared at me. “He’s my friend, too.”

Right. Naturally. This was Marco. It was impossible for him to meet someone and not immediately form a lifelong friendship. I wondered again briefly what the hell he was doing with me but pushed the thought aside. Best not to think about it.

The whistle blew. The game restarted again. 

_ Crack. _

West number 15 connected with the ball.

_ Shloop. _

It barely bounced as it sped over the grass.

_ Thud. _

A red and green player trapped it.

_ Crack. _

And another sent it flying towards the goal.

_ Tff! _

The sound of the ball in the back of the net.

_ Goal!  _

“God fucking dammit!” Eren was distraught as the West Trost players celebrated.

I was actually surprised at my own indifference. I thought I might have been a little more invested this time around but apparently not.

I caught Marco’s eye as he stood beside his goal amidst the celebrations, waiting for the game to resume. Despite the fact that they were back on a level playing field, practically having wasted all the energy their first goal had taken and being back where the game had begun, he still smiled at me. And I smiled back at him. 

He was going to take that goal back. He wasn’t worried.

And he was right not to be worried. TNCHC won that game 3-1. Marco scored their second goal and assisted in their third. Even if I wasn’t particularly invested in the outcome, even if I didn’t really understand the game, I was still one proud boyfriend. If only because of the look of utter achievement on Marco’s face as the final whistle blew.

 

On the way home again, Max was standing right there, leaning against the truck, when Marco offered to let me stay the night at his place. Considering the conversation I’d had with the little brother on the way to the fields, it made the offer twice as awkward as it would have been otherwise. Really, Marco probably meant nothing by it. Sleeping just meant sleeping to him. But colloquial language and euphemisms are inescapable and sleeping definitely wasn’t the first thing I thought of when I heard the words ‘stay the night’. 

In the end, it didn’t really matter either way. I had to go back to the dorms anyway. I had classes the next day I needed to prepare for and, knowing him, Connie was probably still lying on the floor groaning from his hangover. Someone had to make sure he didn’t puke in the carpet. Bert was too caught up in his physics and Armin was on yet another extracurricular research trip to Port Stephens. I was the only one to do it.

 

**

 

_ We cannot travel outside the city anymore. The war has limited travel and there is always the danger of encountering soldiers if we go too far. So, Marco takes me to a little park. It is barely a minute’s walk away from his new studio and part of the very same reconstruction he resents. Still, he says he is willing to forgive Haussmann and his reconstruction, so long as I am happy with the new park. So, I do my best to appear as grouchy as possible just to see how much he will allow.  _

_ He takes me by the hand and I forget even pretend unhappiness as we stroll slowly beside the series of ponds that run the spine of the garden. We are probably both too old to cause a scandal by being so affectionate in public. No one would suspect this was still an unsanctioned match at our ages. He tells me about Noël and Felice and the other artists who once shared his studio, about what they have been doing since the reconstruction. He tells me about his latest work. It is me, of course, but he cannot sell it. If he did, Papa would know we are still seeing each other. Though I suspect he is too old to do much about it now.  _

_ I tell him what I have been doing since we last spoke. It hasn’t been more than a few days and not much of great interest has happened but Marco’s eyes shine as I talk about the errands I’d run and the conversations with Maman that I’d had, all the same. That is one thing that has never changed. His eyes are still bright and innocent, as if looking at the world anew every day. I wonder if that’s why his paintings are so beautiful. _

_ He kisses me as we cross a little bridge over the ponds. He does not ask if he may. He does not need to ask. And we are teased by a gang of dirty children as they race passed us, brandishing branch-swords and fighting off invisible Prussians.  _

_ The sun touches the horizon and we part ways. He kisses me again at the fork in the road where we part and I catch him looking over his shoulder as I turn at the next corner. I, too, had looked back for one last glimpse of him, silhouetted against the setting sun. _

 

**

 

“If they haven’t had secret sex by this point, they should both be up for a sainthood,” I said as I realised I was back in my dorm. 

The water stain on the ceiling had grown since the day before.

“What the  _ fuck _ are you talking about, Jean?” 

I couldn’t help jumping a little at Connie’s voice in the pre-dawn light. His eyes stared out at me bug-like and almost glowing from the middle of a blanket-cocoon.

“Huh? Nothing. I didn’t say anything.” The lie came too easily. I have said it all before. 

“Don’t bullshit me, Jean. You do this every day.”

“Do what every day?”

“You wake up, you say something weird, and then you just try to brush it off. What’s going on?”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. Maybe he was right. Maybe he’d called me out on this a few too many times for me to feign ignorance. But I couldn’t tell him everything. Especially not with all the shit he’d been giving me about Marco the last few months.

“Have I...” I started cautiously and Connie sprung up in bed, taking his cocoon with him, as soon as he realised I was actually going to talk. “Have I ever told you about my... m-my dreams?” 

It sounded corny enough in my head. Saying it out loud just multiplied the corniness by a thousand.

“You mean, like, what job you wanna do after uni?” I could hear the disappointment in his voice.

“No, I mean like  _ actual _ dreams. When you’re asleep.”

Connie shifted on the mattress and the bed-frame gave a nightmarish screech. I’d be lucky if Armin and Bert and the rest of dorm building 12 didn’t hear that. Soon I’d have to tell this embarrassing shit to half of UT. 

“What about ‘em?” he said.

“Uh... so, when I dream, my dreams kind of follow on from each other. Like I’m watching a movie. It’s been doing this for years. And this movie is about this girl-”

“Is she hot?”

“What?”

“The girl, is she hot?”

I hesitated for a moment. It felt a little strange to comment as if I wasn’t involved at all. I mean, Jeanne was still me, despite the 160 years separating our lives.

“I guess. She’s kind of poor in the middle of the story so maybe a bit thin...” I finally settled on.

“So she’s not hot.”

“Huh?”

“Poverty is a major turn off.” I was pretty sure that wasn’t what he actually believed but saying it out loud was almost just as bad.

“That’s pretty shitty of you, man,” I said.

“It’s true, though.”

“What about Sasha, then? She loaded or something?”

“That’s different. She’s... well, she’s Sash.”

I smirked at the way not even his blanket-cocoon could hide the blush creeping onto his cheeks. The boy was whipped.

“She’s hot. Let’s go with that,” I said at last, relieving Connie of the spotlight.

Connie shrugged.

“Anyway,” I began again. “At the beginning of the movie she’s crazy young. I don’t know, maybe six or something. But nothing really important happens until she’s twelve. Then all their money is stolen in this massive revolution-thing and they’re forced into poverty.”

“Ah, bummer,” said Connie sarcastically.

“Are you going to let me tell this or not? Because, I really don’t want to tell you and, if you don’t want to listen either, there’s a way out for both of us.”

“When’s it get to the secret sex stuff?”

“Seriously, Connie? That’s all you care about?”

He shrugged again and I sighed.

“Anyway,” I said again, “since they’re poor, when she turns fifteen her dad leases her out to this painter-dude as a model for a bit of extra cash.”

“What’s her name?”

“Huh?”

“Seriously, Jean, do you even have a brain in there? The girl. What’s her name?”

I couldn’t tell him it was Jeanne. Number one thing to be avoided. Way too close to my name. 

“I don’t know,” I said at last.

“How can you not know?”

I gave a Connie one of his shrugs back. I didn’t need them anyway. “Everyone just calls her Mademoiselle Blumstein.” It was a half-truth.

“Ooh,  _ French _ .” He thought for a second, tilting his head to one side. “Or German?”

“Kinda both. Her dad’s Prussian, her mum’s French and they live in Paris.”

“Russian?”

“No, dumbass,  _ Prussian _ . The whole thing’s set in the past, before Modern Germany even existed. Prussia is one of the states that merged to f--” I stopped myself. Number two thing to be avoided was admitting how much history I looked up when I started having these dreams.

“Where was I?” I asked instead.

“Painter-dude.”

“Thanks. So, you can probably see where this is going. They get together--”

“Secret sex?” 

“Yeah, probably. But her dad’s against it because the painter’s completely broke.”

“What’s his name?”

“What is it with you and names?”

“Just, what’s the painter’s name?”

I hesitated for a second but I couldn’t pull the same trick again and say everyone just calls him Monsieur Bosch. I doubt he’d buy it.

“You promise you won’t laugh?” My voice was more frightened than I wanted it to be. Fuck. What if he laughed? This was probably the real number one thing to be avoided.

Connie placed a fist over his heart and sat up a little straighter in his cocoon. “Cross my heart.”

“It’s... I-it’s Marco.” Damn it, my voice sounded more shy than reluctant. 

“Are you fucking serious? Just how much do you like this guy? You’re dreaming about  _ Marco _ ?”

“No,” I said on reflex but changed my mind. “Yes? I mean, I was dreaming about Italian/dream-Marco before I met med-student/real-Marco.”

“Seriously?” I could almost hear him thinking, ‘ _ He’s Italian _ ?’ but he didn’t say it out loud. It seemed his shock at my apparent clairvoyance was enough to keep him at least half silent.

“I wouldn’t shit you on this, man. It’s fucking embarrassing enough as it is. Wait, hold on,” I said as I leapt from my bed and pulled an old sketchbook out from the pile of dirty clothes beneath the disused ladder up to my bunk. I flipped it open and handed it up to Connie.

“Holy shit....” he murmured, tilting the drawing different ways to see if the face would morph into something new if he looked at it from a fresh angle. “This is actually Marco. You’re actually dreaming about Marco. You’re fucking whipped, Jean. Not even I’m this bad.”

“Look at the date, though, dumbass.”

“So what?”

“I drew that before I met real-Marco.”

“When did you meet real-Marco? Do you remember the date?”

It was in the afternoon. Wednesday, the last week of Summer Semester at the beginning of my second year. The 27th of January. 

I didn’t tell him that.

“I dunno... Just before you got back at the beginning of this year. But that date is pretty obviously before then. See? I’m not bullshitting you, Connie. I met dream-Marco first.”

“Holy shit, Jean. You can tell the future?”

I rolled my eyes and snatched back the sketchbook before he could flip through the pages and find something else more embarrassing than ‘Monsieur Bosch’. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> damn this fic and getting me into international hockey! I probably knew less than Jean about hockey when I started this (actually, why did I make it hockey in the first place?) so I was like, 'well, I'll just watch one game to get some imagery down.' And, of course, the game I chose to watch was the final of the 2014 world cup... which Australia won. And then I was like, 'holy shit... we're actually good at this game!' And I was off! I had to watch it all! 
> 
> Anyway, back to the fic. This chapter has some pretty important characterisation in it, mixed in with all the 'I'm so happy right now!'-ness. That scene where Jean tells Connie about his Jeanne-dreams was actually the first scene I wrote for this fic... probably about a year ago now. Yeah, I've been slow with this. 
> 
> ALSO: Slightly important, somewhere along the line the '1848 revolution' somehow became the '1842 revolution' so there are a couple of wrong dates. I'll fix them up in my copy and update the revised version here when I finish the fic. But know that, from here on out, I'll be using the right dates. Sorry for any confusion.
> 
> Anywho... I hope you liked it. Don't forget to leave a comment so I know how I'm doing. I'm kind of running blind at the moment, here. I'll see you in a couple of days with the next chap!
> 
> Ocean.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are on the up and up for Jean. AKA the fluffiest chapter of the whole fic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Australian things:  
> 1\. Double beds (?) - Are bed measurements international? Just know that, in Aus, from smallest to 'the largest I know the name of', bed sizes go: single, king-single, double, queen, king -- then there's one that's even wider than it is long... but I don't know what it's called.  
> 2\. The Ship Song - This is a song (released 1990 according to google) by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It's half the result of me putting a little more thought into my music choices for this fic and half 'holy crap this song has been stuck in my head for three weeks, I have to do something with it'. I've never actually heard the original. The version I was thinking of when the scene was conceptualised was my sister + aunt's version. Obviously, I can't show you that. I did, however, listen to The Opera House's Ship Song Project practically on repeat while actually /writing/ the scene.  
> 3\. Lino - Linoleum. That gross, plastic floor covering that often mimics actual floorings like tiles or wood. The sign of either an old house or a cheap one. Probably both.

I found I was spending a lot of time at Marco’s. I suppose it was the natural progression of things -- though it could always have gone the other way and he’d spend every moment of his free time at the dorms -- so I had kind of expected it. Still, it wasn’t just the natural progression of my relationship that caused the move. Connie’s girlfriend, the apparently terrifying and definitely exhausting, Sasha Blouse, seemed to have taken over my role as Connie’s roommate. Most nights she didn’t actually sleep over but she left so late that it probably would have been easier for everyone involved if she did.

I actually didn’t mind her, though I’d never say as much out loud. She was loud and talked incessantly and ate all our food, had a painfully strong accent (we’re talking Crocodile Dundee, here) and expected you to be as enthusiastic about life as she was but… I just couldn’t hate her. Is that strange? It was probably strange for me, at least, but she was fun. And _happy_. Maybe I was starting to have a thing for happy people. This was probably all part of the Marco-Effect; ‘those exposed to Marco Bodt recognise with greater ease and begin to appreciate his qualities in others.’

Still, obviously, she wasn’t Marco no matter how happy she was. And she was still exhausting to spend more than ten minutes at a time with. So I kept creeping away to the share-house a couple of blocks north of uni.

Ymir was more helpful than either she or I would be willing to admit. I still hadn’t actually asked if I could use her studio. I’d just sort of slowly moved my stuff in and waited for her to say something. She never did. So I assumed I was in the clear. She even gave me a hand with my project proposal.

“How do I say, ‘I have no money and canvases are expensive so I’m using plywood instead,’ in a way that sounds deep and meaningful?” I asked her one morning.

“Change it around. Say it’s a reflection of the widespread poverty as a result of mass youth unemployment in modern Australia. You could go from there into something about society’s expectation that everyone must and will work, the sameness of modern urban life, and how it is stifling imagination and our ability to change and evolve as a whole. Or you could say something about how wood is the most basic portable canvas and you’re highlighting the antiquity of art history and the role of the First Australians in the formation of contemporary styles, though then you’d have to do a fuck-tonne of research into what you mean by ‘contemporary styles’ and the actual role of indigenous people in making it.  Or something… It doesn’t actually matter. It’s just a proposal. Just use a lot of big words and you’ll be fine,” she replied.

Whether or not her advice was useful was yet to be seen but the proposal was in and I only had another week or so until I found out whether it was good enough.

Christa was there often enough, always popping in with tea and chocolate muffins for her girlfriend, but we didn’t really talk a lot. We weren’t exactly rude, we didn’t ignore each other. But we just didn’t have a lot of reason to talk.

She seemed busy. She’d only be at the house for a couple of hours at a time before she went back to work. And she’d spend nearly every second of that time with Ymir, talking quietly, smiling contentedly, laughing at something one of them had said. All the while, I knelt awkwardly on the floor of the studio, barely two metres away, slicked the elbows in paint and pretending I wasn’t there, couldn’t hear them and was definitely not intruding on their personal time. So, Christa and I didn’t talk a whole heap.

I probably spent one out of every three nights there, either by intention or because I lost track of time while painting and left my return to the dorms too late. Marco did have a double bed so staying over wasn’t the hell it could have been. Though, it was _only_ a double. Double beds really need to be renamed. Though ‘single-bed for people who roll around a lot’ is probably a bit long. Needless to say, then, that it was kind of a squeeze for two adult guys to fit in it.

I wasn’t exactly complaining, though. Trost was well and truly cooling down and the housemates turned the heater off at night to save money, being the poor students they were. So I was glad for the extra warmth so close. It goes without saying that it was an added bonus that that warmth happened to be Marco, his sleeping breaths warming even the chilled air of the room.

I’d gotten into the habit of waiting until he fell asleep so I could warm my icy toes on his calves without worrying about his reaction. Here’s where I would ask you to keep this little habit a secret from him but… he’s actually already found out.

It must have been after midnight and Marco’s breath came softly and steadily from beside me. I was lying on his arm -- something that should have been uncomfortable and lumpy but somehow wasn’t -- so I was slightly in awe that he could sleep so soundly when he had undoubtedly already lost feeling to one of his limbs.

I had been asleep earlier but some noise outside the window had woken me to the realisation that, from my knees to my toes, I was entirely numb with cold.

I glanced over at Marco. I could barely make out his face in the dark, only the tip of his nose and cheekbones poked out of the shadow and into the moonlight. His hair was like some deep-sea creature, clinging to the top of his head and tufting out across the pillow. But whatever unreadable expression he was making didn’t matter. He was definitely asleep.

I poked his foot with one freezing toe and he didn’t respond so I coiled my feet around his warm, warm calf. What relief. Even the leg hair -- which probably would have thrown me into chaos a couple of weeks before with how _male_ it was -- was welcome against my skin.

I felt him flinch.

“Jesus, Jean!” he squeaked, obviously very awake after all. “Your feet are like ice!”

“Sorry…” I mumbled and pulled them back.

Marco yawned loudly and sat up. “Let me get you some socks,” he said.

I sat up, too, and Marco looked over his shoulder at me.

“Maybe a jumper or something, too,” he said.

I’d forgotten my pyjamas back at the dorm (again) and just stripped off anything uncomfortable or confining when we’d gone to sleep, leaving me in nothing but my underwear.

“Thanks,” I said as Marco tossed me a bundle of clothes from his dresser.

I slipped out of the covers and dropped my feet to the floor to get dressed. I’d only gotten so far as the socks when I felt Marco’s eyes on me.

“Do you mind?” I said. “Your stare is making this pretty awkward.”

He just kept on staring. It was weird to think how this situation might have played out a couple of months before. I probably wouldn’t have shared a bed with another man, then. Maybe only if there was a lack of beds. And even then, there wouldn’t have been that warm feeling of pride and accomplishment in my stomach if they’d started staring at me barely dressed. But there I was, sat on the edge of Marco’s bed while he leaned against his dresser and grinned at the sight of me in his knee-high hockey socks.

And I was proud. Of myself. Of him. I did feel accomplished. Somehow, this thing between us had happened and I’d managed to to keep from fucking it up completely.

With a smirk, I left the jumper where it was and stood up for the benefit of his predatory stare.

“How is this better than when I was just wearing boxers?” I asked.

“There’s just something really hot about you wearing my socks,” said Marco.

I rolled my eyes but I knew my smirk had disintegrated into a smile.

He pushed off the dresser and walked around the bed to where I was.

“And not much else,” he added, his hands brushing feather-light over my sides.

“Well, this is a weird kink I’ve discovered,” I said, trying not to shiver.

“Mmmm… socks…” His face was still hidden in the dark so I didn’t see but, rather, _heard_ his smile. He was teasing me again and I didn’t care at all.

His hands were burning on my shoulders compared to the cold night air and I didn’t need to see the glint in his eye to know what it was.

He dipped his head. I felt his nose brush my earlobe before his lips touched my jaw.

“I should warn you,” I said, swallowing hard, “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

I felt his laugh as it vibrated up through my throat as if it were my own.

“Have you completely forgotten last time?” he said.

(Before you flick back to see if you’ve missed ‘last time’, know that I just didn’t tell you. It was mortifying how ignorant I’d been and… yeah, let’s leave no written records of that time.)

Marco’s hands were on my hips by then, his pinkies just barely dipping into the band of my boxers and back out into the frigid air. I’d reached up to grab his shoulders without even noticing.

“Honestly, I kind of want to forget last time happened,” I said.

He froze and stared at me.

“Not like that,” I said. “It’s not that I’m regretting it happened. Only that… well, I didn’t exactly sell myself very well, did I?”

“You did say, ‘you’re kidding?’ about nine hundred times…” said Marco with a smile before he kissed the corner of my mouth. It seemed we were going to continue.

I bunched his shirt into my fists and pulled us a little closer. “See? So let’s forget that time and start again.”

It was more than just his pinkies in my boxers then, I was having to force myself to focus on his words. “Alright, then. Consider that time as ‘reading the manual’. This is the real thing.”

“Deal,” I said and kissed him.

 

**

 

I was happy, I realised in the dark. Sticky, disgusting and aching, yes, but _happy_.

A part of me wanted to know if Marco was happy, too. But other, louder parts told me both, ‘shut up, of course he’s happy,’ and, ‘shut up, he couldn’t possibly be,’ simultaneously.

I blocked them both out and followed my first instinct: check, see for yourself. I guess I’m a mistrustful person by nature if I can’t even trust my own brain.

My eyes had well and truly adjusted to the dark as I took a peek over my shoulder. His eyes were closed but I could tell he wasn’t sleeping. His eyelashes left triangular shadows in the moonlight across his speckled cheekbones. His hair was pushed back from his face and held there with sweat. And he was actually vibrating with happiness.

No, he wasn’t vibrating. He was _humming_.

I listened for a moment, my head back on the pillow. It was slow and sad but sweet. His hum was almost inaudible, just a gentle buzz through my ribs. But, quiet as it was, it was still there. A single voice in the dark.

“I know that song,” I said quietly but Marco was still startled and stopped humming.

“ _The Ship Song,_ ” he replied after a moment.

I hummed in agreement. “It used to wake me up on Sunday mornings.”

“Your alarm?”

“No, my sister -- Adrianne used to play it. I guess she just got sick of me sleeping in and decided it was time to wake up.”

Marco chuckled. It flooded through my back and into my lungs.

“Does everyone in your family sing?” he said as his fingers found mine.

I scoffed. “No, Adrianne doesn’t sing. Not for want of trying, though. She’s just god-awful at it so we’ve banned her. She plays it on piano. Sometimes, when she’s there, my cousin joins her on violin. Now that I think about it, I’ve never seen Hitch so… _quiet_ as when she’s playing _The Ship Song_ with Adrianne.”

“What’s she like normally?”

Knowing my answer before he did, I laughed and wondered if he could feel mine the way his was still rumbling around my chest. “A hurricane,” I finally said. “That’s why, coming downstairs at noon on a Sunday, still rubbing the sleep from my eyes and seeing her standing there so still, with her eyes closed and her ears open… it’s pretty shocking.”

“Sing it for me,” said Marco, his lips against the back of my neck.

“I thought we’d already established that I don’t sing.”

“Please? No one can hear you but me.”

“That’s not as reassuring as you think it is…” I sighed. “Tell you what, I’ll sing if you do.”

“Okay.”

“What?” I hadn’t expected him to agree.

“You start though,” he said. “And I should warn you, I’m pretty god-awful, myself.”

Ah, there had to be a catch.

“I don’t know the words,” I tried. “In my head it’s just a piano and violin duet.”

Marco rolled me over to face him, tangling our legs together once more. My toes weren’t icy anymore but that didn’t mean I was going to pull away.

“Then hum,” he said.

I swear, if he wasn’t Marco...

I closed my eyes, because staring at his face from such a close distance was embarrassing, and hummed.

Marco came in at the second line with the lyrics.

_… and burn your bridges down._

_We make a little history, baby,_

_Every time you come around._

He was right, he really was awful, but the feeling of his thumb keeping time in long strokes over my hip somehow made that absolutely okay.

_Come loose your dogs upon me_

_And let your hair hang down._

His hand, palm warm and fingers calloused from years of hockey, came up to cup my face.

_You are a little mystery, to me,_

_Every time you come around._

He was gentle but incessant, tracing my profile with fairy-touches over and over again. It was a struggle for me to keep humming as my breath started to come shallow. I didn’t dare open my eyes.

_We talk about it all night long._

_We define our moral ground._

_But when I crawl into your arms,_

_Everything, it comes tumbling down._

His ability wasn’t helped by how quietly he sang, his sounds struggling between voiced and a whisper, cracking back and forth.

_Your face is falling sad now_

_For you know the time is nigh_

My eyes opened by themselves.

_When I must remove your wings_

_And you, you must try to fly._

What are you saying, Marco, singing those lines with such a face?

I stopped humming and frowned but Marco kept going, leaning in until his forehead rested against mine.

_Come sail your ships around me_

He kissed me softly.

_And burn your bridges down._

I could feel his lips move as he spoke.

_We make a little history, baby,_

His words were stilted and barely recognisable. He was spending far more time on me than them.

_Every time you come around._

This kiss was longer, stronger, just barely tugging at my lower lip, but not asking for any more than that. Then he tucked me under his chin and closed his arms around my shoulders like he’d just finished a lullaby.

“Go to sleep, Jean,” he said and I felt the shock shoot down my spine.

The spell was broken.

I was still sticky, disgusting and aching, still feeling crusty on top of the freshly changed sheets.

“Nah,” I said, nose still crushed against Marco’s chest, “I think I might take a shower first. I feel gross.”

Marco groaned sleepily when I extricated myself from his arms. It seemed like the lullaby had worked on one of us, at least.

“Hurry back,” mumbled Marco.

“You big sook,” I replied.

“It’s cold.”

I laughed. “Your hot-water bottle will be back soon, I promise.”

 

Of course, when I got back from my shower, Marco was sound asleep and I was very much awake. So I grabbed my sketchbook and slipped back out into the living room.

My ‘mid-sem project’ had finally graduated to being my ‘end of semester final project’ with the submission of my project proposal and, while I wasn’t technically stuck following the proposal exactly, I was still committed to the idea. That being the case, I should probably work a little more diligently on it.

I was drawing eyes. There was an expression I wanted to recreate but every time I tried, it ended up looking wooden and shallow. How did you draw the sort of joy that can’t be contained and just bubbles up to the surface despite the many barriers you throw up in its path? The cheeks were easy enough, I could push the paint around forever until I got the light to fall the way I wanted it to. The mouth was a little trickier but still achievable. But the eyes were just impossible.

I’d barely scratched out an outline and pulled up Google images for references on my phone when a fluffy slipper poked in from the hall. I just caught it out of the corner of my eye and looked up to see Christa standing sleepy-eyed in the archway.

“Oh, it was you, Jean,” she said. “I thought I heard the water running.”

“Sorry, I didn’t realise you were staying over,” I replied. “Marco said Farlan and Samuel weren’t here and Ymir apparently sleeps like a log so I figured it’d be okay.”

“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I wasn’t sleeping. Ymir… Ymir’s a bit of a loud sleeper. It’s alright if I manage to fall asleep first but, if I don’t... it can be difficult.”

I huffed a short laugh. That sure sounded like Ymir.

Christa shuffled around and into the kitchen.

“Would you like some warm milk? I was just about to make some for myself,” her voice came back to me. “It might help you sleep.”

“Does that actually work?” I asked.

“It does for me,” her voice said. “And if you put honey and vanilla in it, it tastes really good.”

“Alright,” I conceded and stood up to join her in the kitchen.

Ymir may sleep like the dead but that didn’t mean Marco did. Moving away from his room was probably a good idea rather than shouting back and forth over the distance between us.

Despite my fears, we were practically silent in the kitchen. The only sound was the scuff of Christa’s slippers on the lino.

She measured out milk in two mugs and tipped them into a pot on the stove. Why she didn’t use the microwave, I wasn’t exactly sure. By sight, she added the vanilla extract and a squeeze of honey. It was obvious how often she did this. The sound of the spoon knocking against the side of the pot joined the slipper scuffing as she stirred it.

Finally, she handed me a steaming mug. I had to admit, it did smell amazing, I could only hope it would taste as good.

“Are you okay, Jean?” Christa suddenly asked.

“Huh? Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just a bit hot,” I said, blowing on the milk.

“No, I mean with Marco. Are you okay?”

I looked at her. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Christa smiled an angel’s understanding smile. “Well, this is your first same-sex relationship, isn’t it? There must be a lot going through your head right now, I know.”

I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Ymir’s my first, too.” She blushed. “She was pretty stubborn. It’s hard, isn’t it, suddenly not being quite who you thought you were?”

That came as something of a surprise. I couldn’t even imagine Christa being with a man. I couldn’t imagine her being with someone other than Ymir, now that I thought about it.

I tried to look nonplussed and shrugged. “I’m fine.”

And I was, by then. I’d already successfully swept everything under a rug.

“I kinda figured: why worry about it? I’ll work it out on an individual basis -- I’ll like who I like and, right now, I like Marco. So why worry about what my preferences are beyond that?” I said.

“I suppose that’s one way to think of it. Everyone’s different. But if you ever want to put a label on it, and I’m not saying you have to, I’m here for consultation.”

“Thanks, Christa,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Hey, Jean?”

“Yeah?” _What now?_

“You know how I work at a publisher?”

I nodded. “Ymir told me.” ‘A glorified gopher/coffee fetcher,’ was how she’d described her girlfriend’s job.

“Well, I was wondering if, maybe, you’d do some cover design for us? I mean, we’re a tiny publishing house, really small, and we can’t exactly hire full-time artists, so my boss -- who’s met Ymir and knows she’s an art student -- asked me if I knew any other artists and this was just after I happened to peek into the studio while you were working and --” She was rambling.

“Whoa, slow down, Christa,” I said. “Why me? Ymir must know a tonne of people.”

She shuffled more uncomfortably than when she’d asked if I was okay.

“I like the way you paint light,” she mumbled, “and we get a lot of fantasy work so… I just thought your style fit well.”

“Well,” I said, trying to find some way to finish that sentence. What happened to paint being my weakest medium? “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. So, will you think about it?”

“Will the offer still be open come Winter? I’m kind of swamped at the moment.”

“Of course! Whenever you have time!” She was practically glowing. “And, of course it won’t be much, but we can pay you.”

“Well, I’ll have to take you up on that, then.”

_I’ll have to buy more oil paints for sure, now._

 

**

 

I couldn’t feel my arm. I tried not to move my leg because as soon as the blood flowed back through that artery in my thigh, the one Marco’s weight was crushing, the pins and needles might just kill me. I was willing to let the limb grow black and fall off rather than face them. I think he might have actually been drooling onto my neck. And his jaw, prickly and uncomfortable with stubble, pressed my face into the pillow so I couldn’t breathe.

But his belly was warm against mine. And I could hear the sound of his breathing, so soft and gentle in the silent morning. His fingers were so certain against the small of my back and his hair was silky against my forehead.

He was so Marco.

And in that moment I didn’t care that I might be about to lose an arm and a leg to poor circulation, or about the drool running down my spine, his itchy stubble, or my complaining lungs. Because he was right there. In my arms. And that’s exactly where I wanted him to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow-ee, that is one fluffy chapter... Watch as I skip over the smut because I can't write it to save my life. Marco is definitely a cuddler and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.  
> Also, I'm kind of weird with physical contact, I'm just not a touchy-feely person unless very drunk (I'm definitely a clingy drunk, though), so this chapter was actually pretty hard for me to write. It was also really hard not to make Jean really feminine? I have no idea if I succeeded or not. He could still seem really girly... I should probably put an OOC warning up for this chapter... But whatever. This is also the only chapter so far (and the only one planned) that has no franceyverse scene. I was going to move the one from next chapter back to this one but it really doesn't fit the tone. 
> 
> About Jean's project. I realised a couple of days ago that I've made a continuity error. When Marco's trying to convince him to come to Ymir's exhibition, he says it's on after mid-sems... but I keep talking about Jean's 'mid-sem project' for another 3 and a half chapters. Sorry about that. I'll fix it in editing.
> 
> I should probably tell you that all of the food that is eaten in this fic is food that I make/eat on a regular basis and, a lot of the time, is just whatever I wanted to eat at that moment of writing the scene. So try not to think too hard about it. Sort of related to that: the reason Christa doesn't use a microwave is simply because I have never owned a microwave in my life (my mum's still convinced they give you brain cancer) so I just didn't know how to write someone using one. The couple of times I've used the ones on campus, there's always been a line forming behind me while I just pressed buttons at random and went, 'how the hell do you use this thing?!"
> 
> Anyway, I should go. I've blabbered on enough. Next chapter will probably be a little short but I'll see you then!
> 
> Ocean.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's raining and Jean and Marco's relationship is settling into steadiness. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, only time will tell. Max turns up unexpectedly at lunch. Meanwhile, in Jean's dreams, the Franco-Prussian war draws ever closer to Paris.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there are any particularly Australian things this chapter. Truth be told, I don't think we even officially say 'GPA' but a lot of people use it anyway.

It was raining. I could tell that even without opening my eyes. It was the white noise sort of rain. The sort that didn’t wash against the windows with the wind in waves but, instead, just fell heavily, consistently, and without the resounding crack of lightning. The sort of rain that could fall all day. The sort of rain that was perfect for sleeping in.

I had just pulled the blanket over my head to guard against the chilly patch that was growing on the back of my neck when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Jean,” whispered Marco’s voice in the same soporific tone as the sound of the rain.

I grunted and pulled the blanket a little higher.

“Jean, I gotta go,” he said again. “Are you going to be alright here?”

I peeked one eye out of the blanket. The room was barely light and seemed leeched of colour, washed in grey from the early morning sun and the rain.

“What time is it?” I mumbled, guarding Marco from the worst of my morning breath with a fistful of blanket.

“A little after seven,” he replied.

“Gross,” I said. “‘A little after seven’ is a time that has no right to exist.”

Marco laughed. “Too early for you?”

I hummed in agreement and changed the topic. “Where are you going at this ungodly hour?”

“I have training.”

“In this?” I glanced towards the window where the rain was still coming down unceasingly.

Marco smiled. “We’re in the gym this morning. Weights in the morning, field training in the afternoon. Provided it dries out by then.”

“Good luck with that…”

“I’ll see you for lunch?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Alright. Get some more sleep, Jean. Ymir’s here all day so don’t worry about locking the door or anything when you head out.”

I closed my eyes again and felt his hand ruffle my hair through the blanket before there was the soft click of the door closing and he was gone.

 

It was comfortable, my relationship with Marco. We’d known each other a little over five months, been dating for almost two. We’d already passed that slightly awkward phase where you’re still trying to stretch out and see where the boundaries lay. I’d like to think we hadn’t quite gotten passed the stage where it actually felt _different_ \-- I hate to use the word ‘special’ but that’s probably as good as I can get -- when we were together but it was coming. We were falling into ordinary days and I couldn’t quite decide whether I liked it or not.

On one hand I was glad. It meant that he’d already seen pretty much the worst I had to offer and still hadn’t run for the hills. He knew what I was like. I don’t really need to add that I was also learning what he was like. I learnt the weird way he brushed the dirt off his feet, by rubbing them together like a fly, before he got into bed. I learnt how obnoxious he could be in the mornings; twenty minutes of being completely comatose and dead to the world and then, like a switch had been flicked, bright and smiling like the insane morning-person he always appeared to be by the time he made it to campus. I learnt that he hated studying passed about six at night and the way his brow would furrow when he had to. The way he hated people talking to him when he was driving across a busy intersection. He wasn’t perfect. He was pretty fucking close but he wasn’t perfect. And I liked him all the more for it. And, no doubt, he picked up a handful (more like a wheelbarrowful) of things he didn’t like about me. He knew I was often a pain to be around -- don’t think I don’t know that’s true. I’m aware of my of my own faults, I promise. He already knew all that and he was still there. I couldn’t possibly fuck this up at this point, right?

But on the other hand, I was starting to worry if I was getting a bit boring with all my faults that never changed. Never improving myself. Never falling any lower. Just staying the same. Just the same old Jean Kirschstein. I couldn’t help feeling that, like this, he would soon grow bored of me and I’d be thrown out on my arse.

 

**

 

It should be against the rules to have any classes on Friday mornings. Or Monday mornings. Or, if we’re going to go that far, let’s just get rid of morning classes all together. Still, we weren’t playing the ‘uni game’ by my rules and Friday mornings still existed. I sat in my French lecture without really thinking about anything.

I had been right about the rain. Marco would have to give up on his afternoon field practice. It was still falling even four hours later, not having stopped for even a second, and the lecture theatre was practically empty. Everyone was probably at home, wrapped up warm in bed, waiting for the lecture to go up online so they could watch it in comfort, not having to deal with anything else but the mug of hot chocolate warming their hands. That sounded pretty good right about then. Or maybe Christa’s warm milk with honey and vanilla. Both options were better than staying where I was in that almost empty lecture theatre full of sleeping students and rain-muggy air, listening to a lecture I could probably do without.

I should admit that I had something of an advantage in French classes -- that was my main reason for taking them. Gotta keep my GPA up somehow. It took me a while to notice, maybe a year or so, but as the memories came back, my French got better. Not in the usual way that second languages improved. It wasn’t that the rules started making more sense. It wasn’t that I found some new method of expanding my vocabulary. No, it was more… I stopped hearing in French.

No, that’s not right either. How do I explain this?

It was like having two first languages. Yes, that’s probably the best way to put it.

Think of it this way: you’re reading this in English. You don’t think of what the meaning of each word is, instead the meaning just flows into your head. Understanding comes even before you ask for it. It was like that. I stopped _hearing_ in French and started just _understanding_ French.

So I was free to zone out, while Lynne fumbled her way through the lecture notes, safe in the knowledge that I could sit there with all the confidence of a native speaker.

I suppose there had to be some advantages to living a weird double life it was impossible to tell anyone about without them making it into one huge joke. I’d learnt my lesson from telling Connie. God, the unending comments and sly looks he kept giving me.

Sasha was complaining about period pain one morning and Connie had just looked at me, smiled and said, “Is it really that bad? Jean, I ask the expert.”

I just rolled my eyes and punched him in the arm. Sasha was very confused. I was never going to admit I hadn’t made a single period joke since I was fifteen. There were some things that just weren’t funny anymore once you’d experienced them for yourself.

 _“That’s all for today, children,”_ said Lynne in French and I suddenly remembered I was supposed to be in class. _“Jusqu'à la semaine prochaine.”_

I stared at the two lines of notes I’d taken all lecture for a moment before I clicked my laptop shut and slid it into my bag.

It was finally time for lunch.

 

**

 

Armin’s little cafe was about as crowded as it ever got. At 12:30, we were pretty much in the middle of the lunchtime rush as well as smack-bang in the middle of the between-classes rush. Still, Connie was already there -- punctual as always when food was involved -- and had saved me a seat. Marco had arrived as well. I could see the back of his head, dark hair curling ever so slightly at the ends, from where I stood in the doorway, my umbrella still dripping onto the hardwood floors of the cafe.

My phone buzzed with a message from Connie.

**We’re in the far corner next to the magazine rack**

I didn’t bother to even reply. I just headed straight over to them. I put one hand on the back of Marco’s chair and rolled my eyes at Connie.

“Dude, I could already see you,” I said. “I was already walking towards you. That wasn’t really necessary.”

It was only when I bent forward to smile and consider placing a kiss on Marco’s cheek (only to almost immediately dismiss the idea), that I realised Marco wasn’t Marco at all. He was Max.

“Oh,” I said. “It’s you.”

Max gave a nervous smile and licked his lips quickly. “Ah, yeah. Hi again.”

Connie ignored the exchange. “Well, I just didn’t want to take any chances. It’s pretty crazy in here today. Wouldn’t want you getting lost.”

I finally dropped into the only other spare seat at the table, sliding my umbrella under my chair. “Oh, please,” I said. “Out of the three of us, who is the only one not to have ever gotten lost on campus?”

Connie shrugged in an ‘I dunno, man, anything could happen at any time’ kind of way.

“The three of us?” said Max. “How do you know I’ve ever gotten lost.”

“Childcare centre,” was all I said.

Connie laughed.

Max looked utterly horrified. “Marco _told_ you about that?”

“We were sitting right over there while he was texting you.” I pointed at the table just inside the door. Then I pointed out the blonde head weaving through the crowded room carrying more than twenty dirty glasses at once and still managing to take three people’s orders before making it back to the kitchen to dump his haul. “Armin’s the one who worked out where you were.”

“So he knows too? Do I have to thank him?” He sounded as if he would rather stab himself in the thigh with a pen.

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” said Connie. “Armin lives to solve problems. He probably got more out of it than you did.”

Max sighed and let his head drop onto the the table in front of him. I watched as the hair that had landed on his plate floated for a second before sinking into the small puddle of sweet-chilli sauce.

“... embarrassing…” was the only word he said that I could make out.

I leant back in my chair with a sigh before I took pity on him and turned to Connie.

“Where’s Marco, by the way?” I asked him, leaving Max with some privacy to work out whatever it was that he was working out.

Connie shrugged. “Who knows? He said he’d be here, like, ten minutes ago.”

I tsked quietly and said, “I’ll call him.”

It rang until it couldn’t be more than two rings from going to voicemail before he picked up.

_“Hello?”_

“Marco? Where the hell are you?”

_“Ah! Sorry, Jean. I went to talk to my tutor about something but there was a bit of a line. So I figured I’d grab a coffee and then go back. But by the time I went back, I’d lost my place in the line and…. yeah, I’m just not having a great morning, truth be told.”_

I glanced from Connie, who was making an incredibly expectant face, to Max, who still had his head on the table, hair in his sauce, and sighed.

“Right, well… When’s your next class?” I said.

_“One.”_

I scoffed. “Don’t worry about it, then, Marco. You’re not going to make it. Get your tutor business sorted out and then go to class.”

 _“Really?”_ said Marco.

“Really.”

_“But I wanted to have lunch with you guys. Connie said Max had turned up out of the blue.”_

“Yeah, he’s here,” I said.

_“He’s not in the way or anything, is he? I know he doesn’t read the atmosphere very well so… if he’s in the way you’ll have to just tell him. But don’t do it harshly or… God, what am I even talking about?”_

I laughed. “He’s fine, Marco. Relax.”

_“Alright then. Well… I guess I’ll see you later, then.”_

“Later.”

_“Jean?”_

I hummed in response.

_“I miss you.”_

I laughed again at that. “I saw you this morning.”

_“I know.”_

Connie was staring at me by then, wanting answers and demanding them with his eyes.

“I’ll see you later.”

_“Bye.”_

Max had extracted himself from his lunch and Connie was shaking his head by the time I hung up.

“You guys are so fucking cute,” said Connie.

“Shut up, Springer,” I said.

 

**

 

_It is dark as I sneak back into the house. But, despite the darkness, the house is alive. I can hear Papa’s voice from the living room, still angry even in a whisper. He hears my footsteps in the hallway and stops speaking._

_“It is only Jeanne,” I hear Maman whisper frantically but Papa just shushes her._

_I push open the door to the sight of Papa with his musket, crouched in the middle of the room, aiming the weapon towards the door._

_“P-Papa! W-what is happening, Papa?” I whisper, the same fear his presence used to incite in me flaring up again. “Why is everyone still awake?” I don’t mean to whisper but the tension in the air doesn’t allow me to speak any louder._

_Papa just waves his hand through the air to dismiss me._

_“Pack a bag, Jeanne,” he says with more kindness in his voice than I have heard in years. “We are leaving Paris.”_

_“Why would we do that? You love Paris. You said we’d never leave.”_

_He tries to wave me away but he is too old and I am not afraid anymore._

_“Papa, what is happening?” I ask again._

_“The Prussians have almost reached Paris.” That is all the explanation he gives._

_“I don’t understand,” I say._

_“Pack your bags, Jeanne,” he says again. “We must leave. The Parisians will not take kindly to us being here when the soldiers arrive.”_

_And suddenly it all makes sense. Everything is horrifically clear. I had known the war was going on. We all did. But no one really understood what that meant. I could only imagine what would happen to us, we of Prussian descent when the countrymen of our fatherland storm into the place we had made our home. I imagine what would happen when war comes to Paris and the poor citizens, those who eke out their livings doing anything they can, have whatever control they ever had ripped from their fingers. I image what they will do to us when they are angry and afraid of the advancing Prussians but too weak to take on the soldiers. The things I imagine I would not wish on my worst enemy._

_“The Emperor?” I ask weakly._

_“Already defeated,” Papa replies._

_I nod my head stiffly and hurry out of the room. A change of clothes and my purse, the tiny painting of a lavender flower Marco had given me that day. I only pack what I think is necessary._

_Oh Lord,_ Marco _. He won’t know a thing. He will think that I have abandoned him. I pause in my packing for a moment and listen for the voices in the living room. They come in waves, first hushed and calming, then fearful and angry._

_I take a scrap of paper and scrawl a quick message._

‘The Prussians are coming. I must flee. I still love you. We will meet again. J.’

_Four sentences are all I need. I slam my trunk shut but leave it where it is as I sneak down the hall and back out into the night._

 

**

 

The next time I saw Marco was only a couple of days later. Ymir had let me in and I was just chilling on his bed, scrolling through facebook and not really thinking about anything. When he came in, he just sort of stopped and his face changed. I don’t know how to describe it. I have never seen Marco make that face except at that exact moment.

His eyes blew wide and his eyebrows came down, his mouth flattened into a line and all the muscles in his cheeks relaxed. It was part fear, part relief, part ‘I can’t deal with this right now’.

He finally thawed and carefully, silently shut the door behind him.

I threw my phone to one side and sat up.

“Marco, you alright?” I asked.

“Yeah, fine,” he replied breathily.

“It’s just, you look kind of…” What’s the name for that expression? “Sick?”

“I’m fine.”

He came and sat beside me on the bed purposefully undoing his shoes at tortoise speed. I’m pretty sure he was trying to avoid looking at me. I frowned and put one hand on his shoulder so he would turn.

He did turn, that weird expression still on his face for a moment before it finally fell away to reveal simple fatigue, and he placed one hand against my cheek.

“Sorry,” he said as the other arm curled around my waist and he buried his nose in my neck, clinging to me like a drowning man.

And maybe Marco was drowning. I had never even considered it possible before but maybe he _was_. Maybe he had been thrown from the boat in a storm and was now being pulled helplessly by the tide, unable to do anything as it threatened to smash him against the rocks. He hadn’t given up yet. He was still struggling against that pull but it wouldn’t be long before he exhausted himself, gave in and dipped below the surface of the churning waves.

I had no idea what could drown Marco. Marco was strong and smiling and totally unbreakable no matter what the world threw at him. I couldn’t think of anything that could possibly drown such a man but, I got the feeling, that whatever it was would be impossible for anyone else to even attempt to swim in.

“I was talking to Max,” he said, his lips brushing against my neck.

“Yeah?”

“It’s really bad, Jean.”

_What was really bad?_

“You want to talk about it?” I said aloud.

He paused. His arms tightened around me fractionally. “I don’t think I should,” he said finally. “I feel like I’d need his permission.”

“That’s fine.” I steeled my heart before I said my next words. I’m not a person openness comes easily to. “We can stay like this as long as you like. I’ll be right here.”

“Thanks, Jean.”

“Are you gonna be alright?” I asked.

“I’ll be fine.”

 

But Marco wasn’t fine. After that day, things came a bit loose at the seams for him. I still had no idea what the problem was. All I knew was that it involved Marco getting up at all hours of the night to sit on the phone with his brother, never saying much beyond gentle hums of agreement and the occasional ‘yes’ or ‘that’s fine’. It involved the bags under Marco’s eyes growing darker with every day that passed and him turning up to fewer and fewer of his classes the longer time went by. It involved zombifying Marco and destroying him from the inside out.

His smile was gone. The smile that could have been bottled and handed out in children’s cancer wards as a miracle cure, the smile I had always thought could survive anything. _That smile_ was gone and I found myself all the more empty for it.

I still didn’t say anything. Not when Marco bailed on me at the last minute, not when he fell asleep in the middle of a conversation, not when he couldn’t come out with me because he was too busy copying Samuel’s notes from the classes he’d missed. I never said anything because Marco still hadn’t said anything.

When he felt ready to talk, I would be there to listen. I kept telling myself this. I liked to believe it’s what made me a good boyfriend but… thinking back on it now, it probably would have been better to say something earlier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the angst has arrived! Or, at least, it has a toe in the door...
> 
> Wow-ee, I've been gone for a while. I'm trying to remember why I dropped out... I think it was exams and then I took a class over winter term (and all of those classes are intensive. Like, really intensive. They're not misnamed) and then I was pretty sick and... yeah, just a whole bunch of reasons just sort of flowing one on from another. Not least of all was how bone-crunchingly hard this chapter was to write. Like, this is one of the key turning points of the story and I just... it was hard. Let's leave it at that. So, even though I've had the second half of this chapter written for months, it took bloody forever for me to get the first half written.
> 
> The next two chaps should be pretty intense, if I do my job right. I don't know when I'll get around to writing them, though. We're just about to start week 7 over here, which is the week that most mid-sems are due. I'll have week eight off (yay! class-free period!) but I have plans with friends and a book to read and a book review to write and a world building exercise to do and... yeah, things always get a bit hectic in the second half of the semester.  
> What I'm saying is: I probably won't have a new chapter for you until mid-November at the earliest?  
> Then again, you know how I am with procrastinating so you never know... Don't get your hopes up, is all I'll say.
> 
> Anywho, I should probs go and actually get some sleep. I really hope this chapter's okay. I've been gone so long and it's a bit short so I'm kinda worried about it... Let me know how I've done!
> 
> Ocean.
> 
> (P.S Sorry this AN was so long)


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exams are just another part of student life. Plus Jean and Marco have a much-needed conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only Australian thing I can think of is a snuggy but they have those overseas as well, right? Otherwise known as a slanket -- a blanket with sleeves. They were big a few years back.

Exam week came, just as it always did. It was that time of year when the days were only just beginning to cool down but the nights were definitely cold -- that annoying time of year where you had to wear three layers out of the house in the morning because it was too cold for short sleeves when you left but too hot for long by noon. Marco somehow flourished in this odd, layered, scarfed weather. He seemed to relish every day that came. But, then again, he was Marco and he looked amazing in everything, even with the dark circles under his eyes that whatever was going on with Max were giving him. Me, I didn't look so good in layers. They just emphasised how skinny I was to begin with. 

Really, I don't know how Marco found the time to look so good. I knew he'd taken a hiatus from work over the end of semester but he was still training. Add that on top of medical exams and I was convinced he was borrowing Armin’s timeturner. Being the vis art student I was, I only had two exams; art history and French. And French was my elective so I’d brought that on myself. Though, I guess, I still had to put the finishing touches on my final project. Even still, with only two exams to study for, I was dying. 

On Monday, I went to the 7-Eleven across the road from res and bought four packets of biscuits and a jumbo pack of noodles. I had the feeling I wouldn’t have time to buy study-snacks for the rest of the week. Connie bought himself a snuggie and spent most of the day chasing Sasha around the living room in it while I cracked open my unused textbooks. I made an effort to take some time and walk to the coffee shop on the edge of campus in the evening just so I was at least drinking something decent while pulling an all-nighter.

On Tuesday I had an exam in the afternoon (art history) so I spent the entire morning cramming. I think I might have exploded if someone so much as touched me, I was so tightly wound. I don’t know how I did on that exam. I’ve wiped the whole experience from my memory. 

Someone (probably Armin) had bought us a coffee plunger and some ground coffee beans. I didn’t ask if I can borrow some. I figured he’s a nice enough guy not to refuse me if he saw me wandering out of my room at three in the morning searching for caffeine. 

On Wednesday, Connie broke out the alcohol. It seemed like he’d finally realised we were halfway through exam week and he hadn’t studied at all. So, he downed one beer after another as he simultaneously smashed out an essay that was almost a week late and revised for his chem exam. 

“Should you really be drinking so much?” I asked as he tossed the fourth can in the general direction of the bin (he’d been getting further and further away from making the basket with every drink). 

“Geez, Jean. You’re such a spoil-sport,” he said, turning back to his books. His concentration was impressive for someone mildly drunk. “Haven’t you ever heard of ‘write drunk, edit sober’?”

“But you never edit anything at all.”

“Nice point. Still, the argument stands.”

I had my French exam later that afternoon and all I could think was, ‘this would be so much better if I were drunk’.

Thursday came as my taste in coffee hit a new low. We’d completely bypassed the instant-stage and gone straight to the hey-there’s-still-some-coffee-left-in-the-pot-let’s-just-reheat-it-instead-of-making-some-more-stage. It probably tasted like shit but my tastebuds gave up on Tuesday.

I was sitting at my desk with my head on an open French textbook and my eyes pointing at all the dirty coffee mugs lined up on my window-sill but not really taking anything in, when I saw Marco for the first time that week. If my exams were this brutal and I was doing pretty lax classes, I could only imagine how hellish his were. 

I say ‘saw’, but it was barely for a second. Just enough to make out his carefully assembled outfit for the day. He was back in his torn jeans, though I noticed how good his legs looked in them far more than I did the first time he wore them, joined by a leather jacket and a scarf. How dare he look so a appealing when I was so tired my brain was coming out my ears? 

Perhaps if it wasn’t I’d be able to see passed my own time-pressured and built-up libido to the slouch of his shoulders and the grease in his hair and the stain on his jeans. All things I realised later must have been there. 

He opened the door at snail-speed, poked his head through, then immediately retreated and closed the door again. I don’t know if he thought I was sleeping or studying or what. But, whatever it was, I sure as hell wouldn’t have minded stopping doing it for him.

It was Friday. I woke on the morning of what would inevitably be the day I toppled over the edge into Hell to a room cold even for this stupid half-season. My brain bounced against my skull when I moved. I could feel the snot congealing in my nose. It felt like it was forming behind my eyes and under my skin. I’m sure if you peeled off my face, it wouldn’t have been a skull underneath, it would be a mask of solidified snot. Not to mention that every muscle in my body ached. I was sick, if you can’t tell. Suddenly the day from Hell was just that little bit more shit. If that’s even possible. 

I stole Marco’s UT jumper that he’d left on my floor because it’s the warmest thing in the universe. Not at all because I knew it must still smell like him even if I couldn’t smell it for myself and I’d need that to get through the day. And tripped into my thickest jeans. I didn’t even bother trying to open my books for last minute cramming. My head was so blocked nothing would get through anyway. I just grabbed the last Tim-Tam from the packet, shoved it in my mouth, and headed out the door for the long shuffle onto campus. I was supposed to present my project that day and I could get by on Ymir’s advice alone. 

_ Just use a lot of big words and you’ll be fine _ .

At least, I hoped I could. 

 

**

 

The first day of official winter arrived just as we gained our freedom. Connie, who seemed to have survived exams without a single ounce of stress, insisted we all head to the beach to celebrate. 

“It’s literally ten minutes down the road. Why don’t we ever go?”

So, there we all were, camped out on the beach, the whole gang in various stages of zombification. Me with the snot mask beneath my skin, Marco with his dark circles, Armin with his business bun and frazzled nerves. Sasha was there, just as unbelievably lively as Connie. Then again, she wasn’t a student so that could explain a lot. Bert had even dragged Reiner out to talk to someone outside his international student support group. Almost no one dared brave the water. Sure, the air was over twenty degrees but we weren’t dumb. Well, with the exception of Eren who you could never find within a kilometre of the water out of his wetsuit. He was out to sea on his board within a minute of arriving. Mikasa and Annie watched him with silent judgment from the shore. I’d heard from someone -- was it Armin? -- that Mikasa could actually surf circles around Eren but had given it up when they were twelve because it made him feel jealous. 

So Jaeger remained alone on the waves, Connie and Sasha remained alone dancing over the sand, as the rest of us sat huddled on the beach and passed two beers back and forth between us. 

I sniffed.  It rattled in my nose, gurgling as I pulled everything back into my skull, and settled deeper into Marco’s side. He’d fallen asleep where he sat and jumped awake before he opened his coat and ushered me inside. I felt a little guilty for that. Even when Marco was more zombie than human, he was still looking out for me more than himself. 

The beer can made its circuit back to us.

“We should do something,” I said as I took a sip and passed it to Marco. “You know, to properly celebrate the end of semester. More than sitting on the beach and freezing our arses off.”

“It’s not that cold. You just think it is because you’re sick,” he replied and passed the can onwards around the circle to Annie.

“Well, freezing my arse off, then.”

I felt Marco’s head loll sideways to rest on top of mine. He was falling asleep again.

“Next week,” he said. “When you’re better and I’ve had some sleep.”

I shifted a little so that I could turn, pressed against him inside his coat, and look him in the eye. “Marco,” I said, “you didn’t even sleep  _ before _ exams. And you won’t so long as you’re still on call to Max twenty-four hours a day.”

I watched as confliction passed over Marco’s face like the waves against the sand barely three metres from where we sat. Then he looked around at the others sitting on the beach and opened his mouth to speak hushed words. I knew before they even left his mouth that he was going to say something stupidly selfless again.

“He hasn’t got anyone else, Jean,” he said.

“You have four siblings, Marco. So does he.” I sighed.

“He could never talk to Ollie. She’s too busy with her kids and career. Hamlet… I love him to death but he’s not the most empathetic person on the planet. And Lily’s out, too. No one wants to break their baby sister’s heart.”

“She’s sixteen.”

“But she’ll always be the baby of the family. He’s only got me, Jean.” 

He looked away from me to cast his gaze around the group again. I was obviously making him uncomfortable. This was not a conversation he wanted to have while the others where around. But he was looking more hollow by the day and he was too fucking selfless to save himself.

“But two days, Marco,” I said. “Surely he’d be fine for two days. Just so you can get some sleep.”

He hunched over me to shield us both from the eyes of the rest of the group before he pressed his lips to mine quickly. I could have told him that I honestly didn’t care what they thought anymore. They’d given me enough teasing and good-natured ribbing that anything he did couldn’t be anywhere near as embarrassing as what they’d already done. 

“Soon, Jean,” he said. “He’ll be okay soon. We’ll work it out. Until we do… well, I don’t really want to prioritise myself until then.”

“But Marco --” I started. 

He took one last glance over his shoulder and, as he turned his head, I got a clear view for the first time. Annie wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that she was listening. Marco clicked his tongue and got to his feet. It felt like the wind was blowing straight through me without his coat around my shoulders and his body-heat pressed to my side. 

I hurried to my feet after him and we set off down the beach, hands in pockets and heads bent against the wind, walking quickly in order to keep warm. In order to keep  _ me  _ warm, I should say. Marco was being considerate once again, damn him. It was so natural and subtle that I didn’t even notice it half the time. 

“Do you remember that time after you first came to see me play?” he said once we were a good ten metres from the others. “When you said that you were still a selfish person for wanting to drive me home?”

I nodded. I didn’t quite understand where he was trying to go with this. It seemed like a different topic entirely. 

“Is that because you liked me?” he asked quietly. “And you felt like it was some ulterior motive?”

I looked at him for a long moment. At his curved nose that definitely betrayed some mediterranean heritage, no matter how many times he told me he was definitely not Italian in the slightest. And his hair with the almost imperceptible curl to it that the wind caught in bunches, lifting and playing with it as he marched on indifferently with his eyes focused solidly on the sand at his feet.

“Shit,” I said with a short laugh. “I can’t hide anything from you.”

He looked at me then, with those eyes I have always loved, and smiled. 

“It’s the same thing,” he said.

“What’s the same thing? You liked me then, too? I did suspect, in retrospect.”

“Well, I did, but that’s not what I’m trying to say.” Marco’s smile stretched into a light chuckle for a moment before a seriousness fell over his face. “No, I mean that me trying to help Max now is selfish.”

“Marco, you’ve practically killed yourself over the last few weeks to help him.”

“But I’m still doing it for me. I’m doing it because… Jesus, Jean, if something happens to him while I’m not…”

I had to look away from the pain on his face. 

“I’d never forgive myself,” he whispered. “So I don’t matter for the moment. I’d give up on sleep entirely for the next month as long as I don’t have to deal with… with what could happen if I didn’t.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had a fairly good idea what was wrong with Max by then. He still hadn’t said it in words -- those poisonous words -- but he didn’t need to. I understood. Far better than I wanted to.

“Okay,” was what came out of my mouth in the end.

“I’m sorry, Jean,” he said.

“What the hell for?”

“I’ve been kind of absent recently, haven’t I?”

I laughed at that, thinking of his already insane schedule plus the Max-issue, and reached into his jacket pocket to curl my hand around his. “You can’t do everything. You’re not Superman. I’ll be just fine until you get back.”

His hand squeezed mine in the confines of his pocket, a pocket really too small for both of us, and I looked up. I don’t know how long he was doing it for but he was making the lemming face.

“I fucking love you, you know that?” he said and kissed me again, not caring anymore which of our friends were watching from down the beach.

  
  


**

 

Marco did double his efforts after that. He went from half-zombie to full zombie. He ripped himself in half trying. But it was still only two weeks after that conversation on the beach when I learnt why Max’s doctor advised he give up driving. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's mid-November and I'm back. Though I can feel guilty still because I was actually working/posting another fic during a lot of the time I was gone. Somehow feels like I'm cheating on my partner... 
> 
> My uni actually has two weeks of exams at the end of semester but 'exam fortnight' doesn't sound anywhere near as good.
> 
> Can I just say, this chapter was fucking impossible to write (oh, how I've missed being able to swear. That other fic is pretty solidly PG). That's part of the reason I was gone so long. I only cracked the writer's block today and immediately smashed out two chapters. But now I'm at a sticking point again... damn it.  
> I think the voice is completely different in this chap, for which I apologise. The next chapter is even worse when it comes to voice inconsistency, for which I apologise again in advance. I'll post that one in a couple of days. With any luck, I'll have worked out how to get past this next sticky bit by then and the updates can be semi-regular again. God, I'm sorry about my terrible work ethic. You're all so good to me considering all the shit I make you put up with.  
> This is only the second chapter without any Francey-verse bits in it. It was supposed to have a bit but I couldn't get it to fit. And where I broke this one off seemed like a good place to break it.  
> Should I ask how you found the ending of this chap? The angst has kicked open the door and is here! Do you hate me? Did you see it coming? Do you understand what's happened or have I been too vague? This was one of the earliest plot ideas I had for this fic. It came into my head pretty much third. First was Francey-verse, second was something you'll see next chapter, third was Max's ____ (leaving it blank in case you haven't worked it out yet). I'll add that tag next chapter when it becomes obvious.
> 
> Anyway, Imma go now and stop rambling. I'll be back in a couple of days with that next chapter.  
> Until then,  
> Ocean.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short warning: there is talk about suicide in this chapter so if that's not something you're comfortable with, I suggest you wait this one out. I'll have the next chapter done at some point.

_ The night has not changed since I left it barely twenty minutes ago. Yet, somehow, it is entirely different. The people that walk the streets are ignorant. Those tucked away, warm in their homes, are somehow already complicit to a crime that has not yet been committed against me. All the same, I must get to Marco.  _

_ His studio window is dark after I have crossed the city to reach his building. He must already be sleeping. I sneak up the stairs to his room and slip the note under the door. I have only just turned away when the door opens behind me. _

_ “Jeanne?” says Marco and I turn back to him. “What are you doing here?” _

_ When I don’t say anything, he looks down and finds my note.  _

_ “You’re running?” he says. _

_ “I don’t have a lot of choice,” I reply.  _

_ “You’re going to go with your father?” _

_ I nod. _

_ “But this is…  _ Cara mia _ , do you not see? This is finally the chance you have been waiting for.” _

_ “I don’t understand,” I say. _

_ Marco steps forward to touch my face. “You’re father leaves town tonight, yes?”  _

_ I nod again. _

_ “Then you will have the whole of Paris in which to hide from him.” _

_ “But I am still a Blumstein. I am still Prussian,” I say. _

_ Marco shakes his head with a laugh. “Who cares?” _

_ “I am sure Paris will care when they discover there are Prussians coming for their lives.” _

_ “Then we will run, too,” says Marco. “Tonight, if you cannot stay. Your father goes South?” _

_ I nod, not knowing how he could know that. _

_ “Then we will go North. You and I. I don’t care anymore.” _

_ I laugh as he kisses me. _

 

**

 

And then the dreams changed. 

They’re weren’t laughing and paint on noses and sloppy kisses when we thought no one was looking anymore. They weren’t even hurrying bags together and us fleeing in the dead of night. They were entirely new and, even if it meant remembering nights upon nights of hiding from terrified Parisians, I couldn’t help wishing they had never changed. The new dreams were full of blood and pain and crying under the covers at night when you thought no one could hear. They were fear and soldiers and monsters that grinned as they snapped you in two and popped you into their mouths like cherries. 

I always woke screaming but Connie’s bed was empty. It was winter break and he had gone back to his parents’ place in Tasmania. I didn’t have to worry about explaining anything. In the dark, there was no one to judge me for burying my face in my pillow and sobbing – all out  _ sobbing _ with the snot running down my face and my hands trembling and my body trying to evict me – but, just as there was no one there to judge, there was also no one there to comfort and the feeling was horribly familiar. 

Some nights I still had 19 th century France and Marco grinning as he tried his best to be serious, as he warned me to stay still while he painted. I was catching up on the moments I’d missed in my summary of Jeanne’s life. But those pleasant nights seemed to be fading, replaced more and more often with those dreams worse than nightmares.

I didn’t want to sleep anymore.

And I couldn’t tell Marco. His brother was dead. Even if his brother wasn’t dead,  I still couldn’t tell him. He didn’t remember a thing. So I couldn’t heap all this shit on him on top of the fact that his brother just died. No, his brother hadn’t only  _ died _ . His brother had just killed himself. 

Max, who had given up driving on doctor’s advice, had seen the railing on the bridge across the River Sina, hit the accelerator instead of the brake and gone straight over the side. 

“It could still be an accident,” I remembered Marco’s voice saying over the phone right after he heard, as if that semantic pickiness would somehow make everything better. 

He was quoting a policeman, someone who was ‘looking into the case’ the way they did on crime shows. I knew that without him telling me. Because Marco knew even better than I did that this wasn’t an accident. 

I remembered Marco’s voice. I remembered the controlled tremble, the careful emotionlessness, the numbness that filled every word he said. I remembered my feelings of uselessness and how hollow everything I said was -- how rehearsed. Cookie-cutter responses because there was nothing else to say.

I’m sorry.

Marco, I’m sorry.

You’re going home for a while, aren’t you?

It wasn’t your fault.

I’m so sorry.

Every time I thought of that horrible phone call when we both realised Marco could tear himself to pieces trying to save his brother and nothing would make a difference, I felt like I was going to be sick. Marco. Marco should be my priority. Max didn’t need help anymore but Marco was hurting.

But then I’d go to sleep.

But then I’d wake up screaming.

And then I wanted nothing more than to curl up beside him and let him spoil me in that horribly self-destroying selfless way that he has. I wanted Jeanne back. I wanted sunshine days and poverty-stricken Paris and Marco’s paint-speckled smile. I wanted my life to go back to the way it was before this hell began. Before Max died. Before the dreams changed. Before Marco destroyed his own health to save someone who couldn’t be saved. 

I wanted him to remember. 

That was what I really wanted. I couldn’t take it anymore. He had to remember  _ something _ surely! I couldn’t be the only one pining after things that I could no longer change. 

That’s selfish, I know. I shouldn’t want to cause him that feeling of loss you get when you realise you can never get that life back again. Especially not with everything that had just happened. My own worries were minuscule compared to his. I should just shut up, give him a hug and let him go home to his family. 

But I didn’t. 

If it meant I didn’t have to face this alone. If it meant I could tell him I’ve loved him for the last 150 years, I wanted him to remember.

So I said it. My one desperate attempt to make him remember.

“ _ Cosa fai, cara mia? _ ” It came out as barely a whisper. “ _ Siamo quasi al lago... _ ” 

I can’t remember anything else from the dream. The rest of what he’d said on that sun soaked afternoon was completely forgotten in the wave of blood and fear that came later. I didn’t even know what I was saying as I tried to remember the way the words sounded in his mouth. Anything I did say probably made no sense. He’d never learnt Italian. He shouldn’t know what it meant either. But, if it was anything like French and me, he would remember. 

Fuck, I hoped he didn’t remember. I’d changed my mind. This was too selfish. I couldn’t add anything else on top of what he already had. But at the same time... he had to remember. I couldn’t do this alone anymore.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. I thought for a second that he hadn’t heard me. He was just digging through a box of things he’d left in my room. Jumpers and coats and things he’d need back in Canberra, down south where it was colder. I didn’t know if I was relieved or not. Until he finally lifted his head and leaned against the bed frame with a sigh.

“Jean, you know we don’t have time for this. I need to get home today,” he said and I felt my heart drop, though I still wasn’t sure if it was with relief or disappointment. “And what was that about a lake?” He added it like an afterthought, already turned back to the box of things under the bed. But it was all I needed.

He’d understood. He remembered a language he had never learnt. And, if he could remember that, maybe one day I could drag him into this hell with me just so I didn’t have to be alone with these memories.

I stepped forward, sliding my arms around his waist and laying my forehead against his shoulder-blades. I hoped he took it as an effort to comfort him rather than the pathetic pleading for him to stay with me that it really was.

Marco stiffened. I felt his shirt shift against his back as he looked down at my arms crisscrossed against his stomach. 

“Jean?”

I didn’t reply. 

“Jean, what’s wrong? You’re acting really weird today.”

I just shook my head and he sighed, giving in and placing his hand over mine.

“You know I don’t want to go home, either. Jesus, you know I would do anything -- I thought I had done everything so that this would never happen. But it did. Fuck. It happened. And now I can’t just leave my mum like this. She needs me.” 

His voice was soft and I tried not to remember the way it sounded when slicked in Italian vowels. It wasn’t painter Marco I wanted, after all. It wasn’t soldier Marco, either. It was poor uni student Marco who needed to go home and see his mum because his brother just drove off the side of a bridge. 

I didn’t say anything. I’m selfish. His brother just died. I wanted him to stay. I knew the guy. I’m selfish. Oh shit, I’m so fucking selfish.

“And, if something happens, I’ll be right back here. I’m only a phone call away and...” He took a deep breath and when he spoke again his voice was barely a whisper. “Jean, please don’t make this any harder. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Promise.” I could hear the tears at the back of his throat but all he was doing was trying to comfort  _ me _ . 

_ Don’t say any more, Marco. Don’t treat me so kindly when I can’t even be there for you when you need me. _

I nodded against his spine. He didn’t deserve having to tear himself apart for some other human wreck. I could only let him go. And it wouldn’t be for long. Right?

 

**

 

_ I don’t go back to the house for my bag. I have only the clothes I wear. Marco has a small bag filled mostly with the inheritance he received when his father died. Just money. That’s all we carry.  _

_ We laugh as we run through the dark of night, through the streets and out into the country, fields and farms. Finally, we cannot run anymore. We have slowed to a trudge but the smiles remain on our faces. I think momentarily of my parents. Maman, I will miss. Maman, I love and do not want to leave. Papa, even when he is too old and broken to hurt me, I will lose no sleep for. Marco more than makes up for him. _

_ The first shot hits Marco in the neck and he falls into the mud of the field we are crossing. I don’t have time to comprehend the thunder-crack of the rifle, the sight of his body falling or the confusion and fear on his face before the next bullet hits me in the chest. I fall but I am not dead. _

_ Breathing is hard. It sounds as if I am breathing through water. Though it is nothing to the sound Marco is making; like water boiling in the pot on to stove, but with gasps and choking.  _

_ There are boots in the mud beside us. The owners of the boots are speaking. I recognise German, spoken with a Prussian accent -- the way Papa speaks it when he is drunk. I don’t know many words, I never have, but I think I make out ‘not soldiers’ and ‘mistake’ from the garble of consonants.  _

_ Then the boots are gone, walking away calmly through the field as we both lie dying in the mud. Marco’s eyes are bright in the darkness, desperate. I crawl as best I can to his side but I am as dead as he is. I take his hand, blood making them slick against each other, just as the brightness leaves his eyes and the horrible choking noise stops. _

_ I don’t move and I don’t cry. I only hold his hand and watch his face and try to breathe through the fluid that is slowly filling my lungs. Despite everything, despite Marco’s hand growing cold in mine, I still want to live. I still want to live with him, impossible as it is now. _

_ What were we running for? A place where we could forget the rest of the world? A place for only us? We didn’t need that. What we needed was only courage.  _

_ When Marco came to ask for my hand, I should have never asked him to leave. I should have never asked him to stop trying. I should have been braver, stopped Papa long before his body forced him to stop or, when it did, we should have tried again then. We had chances. We just never had the courage to take them. _

Again _ , I think as my breath struggles out with the blood between my lips.  _ Let me live again. Next time, I will do things right.

 

**

 

A month earlier, a dream like that would make me wake sweating and breathing hard but, after the nightmares I had been living every time I closed my eyes for the last few weeks, that was nothing. I had just died, drowned in my own blood over a case of mistaken identity -- a stupid, pointless death -- but it was nothing. She was only thirty-three, I reminded myself. Who cares? Nac was fifteen when he was crushed in a monster’s fist. 

Nothing could shock me anymore. 

But nothing could hold me together either. Marco had left for Canberra. I had no enemy to fight. I wasn’t Jeanne with a father I could stand up against in order to prove my strength. I wasn’t Jean, the soldier, who could fly through the air and kill monsters and at least appear strong as he shat his pants in fear. I had all the enemies and none of the ways to defeat them. It’s a little hard to fight your own subconscious. So I could only sit there, in a puddle of my own terror-stricken sweat, and try to ride the wave of fear until it ended.

Though I had the awful feeling that it wouldn’t end for a long, long time.

 

**

 

_ There are soft voices from inside and an even softer light seeping out of the windows onto the porch. I can hear a wave of crickets hiding in the forest off to the side of the trainee-barracks and feel the warmth of Marco’s back against mine as we sit in the semi-darkness outside. We don’t really say anything. We’re both busy with our own thoughts and so sore from training we can barely move. We just sit, back to back, in the light thrown outside from the cabin window and the soft lull of cricket-song. _

_ I let my head loll back against his shoulder and look up at the small stretch of sky peeking out from behind the cabin roof; black and dark with purple, bruised clouds, dotted with a handful of stars. Open and endless. I hear the paper on paper sound of Marco turning a page in his book.  _

_ Everything is so peaceful it’s unsettling. It’s the kind of stillness that needs to be filled. _

_ There’s a faint ‘clonk’ as Marco puts down his book on the wooden decking and leans his own head back against my shoulder so we’re both staring at the stars, ear to ear and back to back. _

_ “Hey, Jean,” he says eventually and I grunt a response. “Do you think there are other worlds out there?” _

_ “What do you mean by, ‘out there’?” _

_ “In the stars, I guess. But I really mean anywhere. Just, do you believe there could be a ‘somewhere else’?” _

_ I don’t even pause. “No,” I say, “We’ve only got one world. It’s shitty that it’s this one but it’s all we’re gonna get.” _

_ He hums in agreement, lifts his head off my shoulder and picks up his book again. We sit in silence for a moment more. It was such a strange thing to ask and I can’t shake the feeling that I didn’t give Marco the answer he wanted. He barely moves as he steadily reads through the words before him.  _

_ Why had he asked such a thing? _

_ He doesn’t move. I stare at him harder, at the tiny freckle behind his ear that peeks in and out of his hair when he moves. It remains visible for nearly a minute before I can’t take it anymore and speak. _

_ “Why?” I ask at last. _

_ He closes his book around a finger and turns over his shoulder to look at me.  _

_ That was the answer he wanted.  _

_ “I just have this dream sometimes that we’re somewhere else.” _

_ “Where are we if we’re not here?” _

_ “I don’t know but it’s definitely not inside the walls. We’re both older and we go to school together. I’m learning how to be a doctor.” _

_ “What about me?” _

_ “You’re... well, I’m not sure what you’re learning but it looks like a lot of work.” _

_ “And it’s not a military school? Neither of us are soldiers?” _

_ “Well, there are no titans to fight so... I guess we don’t have to be. I wonder if there are any soldiers anywhere...” _

_ No titans. No titans at all and no soldiers to die fighting them. As if such a utopia exists. _

_ I scoff and focus my eyes back on the stars. “Sounds like a dream, all right.” _

 

**

 

Oh dear god, that was it. I’d woken up in the kitchenette. The dorm was empty. Armin was on his volunteering in Africa thing. Bert had gone back to Germany for the long winter holidays. Connie was still on the apple isle. It was just me and I’d forced myself to stay awake, forced away the dreams the only way I knew how, for so long that I’d just passed out in the end. I guess there was no escaping them forever.

The kitchen’s lino was cold against my cheek but I didn’t move to get up. I was thinking about what I’d just seen. It was a long time since I’d seen that world not bathed in blood. These dreams were strange and not just in the horrific effect they were having on every part of my waking life. Jeanne’s life had been chronological for the most part. These nightmares jumped. I watched my classmate get torn in half while still alive one night. The next night he was alive and whole again, standing next to me on a red tiled roof as we planned an assault. 

And now I was pretty sure I knew why.

I was never supposed to have these dreams. That’s why they were screwing up. Like I was trying to steal my neighbour’s wifi and it kept dropping out because of the distance. These dreams weren’t memories. They hadn’t happened yet at all. 

I’d heard of people remembering past lives, though I’d dismissed them as attention seeking arseholes until it happened to me (funny how that works) but I’d never heard of people seeing their  _ future  _ lives. That’s why soldier-Marco remembered. He remembered my Marco the way I remembered Jeanne. Because… 

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

I still had to live that world. It wasn’t over. It might never be over. 

That life and those titans were all I had to look forward to in the future. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully my break wasn't so long that you've completely forgotten what was happening in the franceyverse... I have the feeling that the voice for those bits is pretty off. I actually wrote those first, I wrote out the whole franceyverse story before I even started on the modern-verse story to try and get some sort of consistent but discrete voice between the two.  
> Did I actually do that, though? Who knows.
> 
> I feel like a lot of people will be angry at me for this move -- for bringing the canonverse into it but... I promise this was planned since the beginning. It's the story of three seperate lives and the one boy who had to live them all at once. Hopefully there's enough of a twist on it to hold onto whatever originality I had.  
> Likewise, Max's suicide (I can say that now, can't I?) was also planned from the beginning. Man, he was one hard character to write. We depressives are damn good at pretending to be okay. I had to show that but still have that undercurrent of 'there's something not quite healthy about this kid'. I don't know if I quite managed it. That scene where Marco is packing to go home to his mum was one of the very first scenes I wrote for this fic and remains one of my all time favourites.  
> I should probably say that Jean's attitude towards depression and suicide, while common, is not a healthy one and it's mainly caused by his own self-esteem issues.  
> (Also, there is a mistake in Jean's Italian. He accidentally implies Marco is a woman.)
> 
> For the record, I'm still stuck with that next chapter. My planning literally has the words 'nobody knows!' written under the title 'chapter 17'. I know where I want to end up but actually getting there is going to be a challenge.  
> Hopefully I get there soon. Hopefully I made someone cry this chapter. You know there's something wrong with your tear ducts when you can't help crying every time you read the words 'I'm so fucking selfish' out loud while proofreading your own writing. I'm fine reading in my head but as soon as I have to read it out loud... there's just something more emotional about it. So, with any luck, I will have gotten a few of you, too. 
> 
> Until next time,  
> Ocean.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The winter holidays begin in earnest and Jean is alone in Trost. Truthfully, everything is going pretty shit for the entire cast at the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There don't appear to be any particularly Australian references this chapter.

I liked the beach. There was no beach in Paris. There was definitely no beach in that horrible future-world. So the beach was my anchor point. It was where Jean Kirschstein, 21 year old student at the University of Trost, went. It didn’t belong anywhere else.

So I found myself, most afternoons after my body had given into sleep against my will, woken sweating and screaming and full of regret, sitting on the beach and watching the waves. I sat and watched. The back-pockets of my jeans and my shoes filled up with sand. I’d never be able to keep my phone in these pants again without scratching it beyond repair. But I didn’t care. I only wanted to watch the waves and be sure of exactly where I was. 

They were calming in their regularity. And the sound of them pushing and pulling against the sand, jostling amongst themselves, covered any lingering screams that might be echoing around my head. And they were a little disappointing. These things had travelled hundreds of thousands of miles across the largest ocean on the planet, sometimes as no more than ripples amongst particles, fighting and fighting to keep on moving, only to end up crashing against the sand and slipping back out to sea. Where they had to begin again. 

Sometimes it was nice to believe there were things in this world that were bigger screw-ups than me. 

“You little shit!” There was a voice from behind me. “I can’t believe you had me driving all over town when you were right here the whole time.”

I turned towards the voice. “Adrianne?” I said. “When did you get back?” Last I heard, she was still in Denmark/Norway.

“Three weeks ago. You’d know that if you ever actually checked your phone. I’ve been sent on a quest to find you,” she said as she dropped into the sand beside me. “I went to your dorm room but there was only this one kid --”

“Who was it?” I interrupted.

“I don’t know. Some kid.”

“What’d they look like?”

“Ahh,” said Adrianne, thinking, “Brown hair. Tanned. Average height.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s really not specific enough.”

Adrianne chewed her lip for a moment in thought. “He had damn Christmassy eyes, if that helps.”

“Noёl…” I said it almost quiet enough for her not to hear. But not quite. 

“That’s his name?” she said. “Man, his parents aren’t original enough with their naming.”

“Huh?” Her voice woke me again from memories of a life that was never really mine. “N-no… His name’s Eren. If we’re thinking of the same person.”

Adrianne shrugged and continued her story. “Well,” she said, “so this ‘Eren’ kid says you’re probably at ‘Marco’s’ and gives me this address for the other side of East Trost. But when I get there, you’re nowhere to be found. Seriously, pick up your damn phone.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I left it in my room.”

Adrianne sighed. “That has to be the least mobile mobile-phone I’ve ever heard of.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Anyway,” she said, “So, I’m at this ‘Marco’s’ place, you’re obviously not there, and this kid with a ridiculous bowl cut --”

“Who?”

“Seriously, Jean, you can’t expect me to know all your weird friends. This one was tall, serious face and bowl cut -- like, actual bowl cut with it straight across his forehead and shaved underneath.”

I frowned. That sounded a lot like Andrea. Damn, I still hadn’t met him in the present. How the hell does he fit into all this?

“I don’t think I know him,” I said aloud.

“Well, he gets this other guy and the other guy says Marco isn’t even there. He’s gone home to Canberra -- fucking Canberra of all places -- for the holidays.”

That was probably Farlan. Samuel didn’t have the delicacy to keep himself from saying ‘he’s gone back to his mum’s house for his brother’s funeral’. 

“He’s like, ‘have you tried the uni?’” said Arianne. “And I’m like, ‘he wouldn’t go there unless he had to.’ So he suggests I try your dorm and I’m like, ‘I already did!’ So, there I was, heading back towards you dorm to ask the kid with the Christmassy eyes where else you might be when, lo and behold, there’s the back of your head, sitting on the beach twenty metres from the road.”

I tried to smile understandingly. “Sounds like quite the expedition.”

“It was!”

“Why were you even looking for me so desperately?” And why can’t you just leave me alone to wallow in my own fear?

“Mum’s worried about you,” said Adrianne. “You haven’t been returning her calls and you’re ignoring her messages.”

“So she just assumed I must have been taken hostage and sent a rescue squad after me.”

“Don’t be a dick, Jean,” said Adrianne.

“I’m always a dick,” I said. “I thought you knew that by now.”

“Just give her a call,” she sighed. “Actually, no. Come home. It’s the holidays. There’s no benefit to you staying in that poky little dorm with no one but Christmas-Eyes for company.”

“He doesn’t even live there,” I said.

“How the hell did he get in, then?”

I shrugged. “Armin must have given him his key while he was away.”

“The brilliant, blonde guy?” asked Adrianne. “That one you said I was never allowed to meet because I’d probably kill him and steal his eyes if I ever saw them?”

I attempted a chuckle. I’m not quite sure how well it turned out. 

“Yep. That’s Armin,” I said.

There was silence for a long moment. Adrianne still hadn’t replied and, when I turned to look at her, she was frowning at me. I knew why. I still hadn’t given her an answer. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to wallow. It seemed like the easier option. And what right did I have to make an effort to be happy when, one day in the future, I would lead a squad of teenagers to their horrible, gruesome, screaming deaths? I deserved to wallow.

“Jean?” said Adrianne sternly.

“Yeah?” I said, feigning ignorance.

“Will you think about it, at least?”

“Think about what?” I knew I was pushing it but Adrianne didn’t seem to notice.

“Coming home,” she said.

Two more waves -- waves that might have been caused by some subtle tectonic movement off the coast of California just as easily as they might have been by wind or heat or a thousand other factors -- broke on the beach and I sighed. I couldn’t explain to her why I deserved to suffer. That world I would someday need to live was beyond words, even if I did want to run the risk of sounding crazy by telling her about my messed up dreams. I couldn’t run forever. I’d need to stop wallowing at some point.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

And that was exactly how I found myself back home in my parents’ house in West Trost, in the exact same bedroom I’d lived in my entire life until the summer after my nineteenth birthday. 

 

***

 

I did my best not to sleep. Sleep was where the monsters lived. I drank coffee and energy drinks until my body started forcibly rejecting them. I filled my belly with water and refused to go to the toilet, keep myself awake by sheer discomfort. I watched endless action movies, horror movies, comedies, rom-coms -- anything to fill my head with other thoughts and my eyes with LED.

But sleep always came.

Usually, there’d be a moment, just after I woke up where everything was silent. I was lost when I woke up. Empty. I was slicked in sweat and the night must have been freezing against my damp skin. My heart was pounding in my chest. But I felt nothing. I was empty.

The world was so still around me. All the sounds I could hear were from my memory. Screams. Giants’ footsteps. Fear. But then reality would filter through again. I kept my window open, despite the winter air, for the sake of the sound of the suburbs that floated through. Someone was mowing their lawn. The dog next door was being a little shit again. Cars and neighbourhood chatter, the far off sound of the city. 

They were my beach when the beach was too far to be immediately accessed. So I lay there as the nausea faded and my skin cooled and my heart slowed. The screams were drowned out with lawn mowers and yapping dogs and the sound of Bernadette from next door telling Joanna from number 32 about the rush at the shopping centre. 

Relative sanity returned, only marginally traced with the guilt and grief that seemed to follow me everywhere these days. 

The first thing I did was reach for my phone. I had to call Marco -- had to know he was still there. But my hand never made it to the phone. 

I couldn’t call him. He didn’t need my shitty nightmares on top of everything. And besides… I hadn’t picked up for him. 

I couldn’t pick up the phone when he called. Part of it was not knowing what to say. Part of it was fearing to say too much. And part of it was just knowing that whatever I was having to deal with was nothing compared to what he had. 

Marco was the glue that held his family together -- the sensible one who everyone turned to for help. But, if that was so, who was he supposed to turn to? Certainly not me. I’m useless. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to comfort him. I don’t even know how to listen so how the hell am I supposed to help? No, he couldn’t turn to me. So… did that mean he was all alone? 

How could I bring myself to call him -- to pile more onto his plate -- when he had no one to share the load with?

That was too selfish. Too selfish even for me.

 

***

 

I’d been back, living with my parents for a little over a fortnight when even they started to catch on that something wasn’t entirely right with me. I guess, no matter how many fake smiles I plastered on, they were going to find out sooner or later. 

I was feeling pretty good that day -- adventurous. Maybe that was the problem. And my adventurousness lead me to leave my door open a crack so that, when the voices came, I could hear them clear as a bell up the stairwell. 

“We should call someone.” Mum’s voice. 

“Who would we call? No, we need to talk to him first.” Dad.

“But he’s so…” Mum tried to find the words and came up blank. 

“He’s sick,” said Adrianne’s voice. “You can say that, Mum. Your baby boy is sick.”

“He doesn’t eat,” said Mum. “He doesn’t leave his room. I don’t think he sleeps. You can hear him banging around up there at all hours.”

Of course I didn’t eat. What sort of heartless monster did she think I was? If I ate, I’d have to listen to that sound -- the crunch and squelch and swish of the food being pulverised between my teeth was a sound that haunted my sleeping mind, I didn’t need it in my waking one. 

“I thought bringing him home would do him some good but maybe I was wrong.” My stomach knotted at the worry in her voice.

“Do you think he’s been dumped?’ asked Dad.

There was silence for a long moment.

“I don’t think so,” said Adrianne. “Remember how he acted when Libby Towley dumped him when he was sixteen? He was nothing like this.”

Great. I didn’t even know they knew about that.

“This is probably…” Adrianne went on. “Probably something else.”

There was something in her tone that made me think I knew what she was alluding to. 

_ Don’t do this to me, Adrianne. This is definitely not how I want to come out to my parents.  _

I could practically hear my mum frown in the silence that followed.

“Do you know something, Adrianne?” she said.

I stood up, strode across the room and slammed the door shut. That was not a conversation I wanted to hear the end of.

With a sigh, I lay back on my bed again, eyes on the ceiling and mind determinedly not on anything.

_ They’re still your family, despite everything. _

My conscience sounded like Marco for some reason and I turned to my empty desk chair. I could see him there, if I tried, wearing that stupid contented smile as comfortably as his ripped jeans. He would probably turn the chair around -- sit on it backwards with the spine of the backrest between his knees and his arms crossed over the top. He would laugh and talk about whatever he’d been cramming into his head from studying all day -- fucking  _ enzymes  _ or something -- and the world would seem a little brighter.

“What do you think I should do?” I asked the imaginary, still-happy Marco. 

He laughed again with a shrug. “Life goes on. The world keeps spinning. You can only learn to take one day at a time.”

That was terrible advice. I was sure the real Marco would have done better. 

My phone rang on my desk just then, the vibration sounding like a swarm of hornets in a jam jar. I took a peek at the screen.

“It’s you,” I told the empty chair.

“Are you going to answer it?” replied the chair.

“What would I say?” I said. 

More empty sympathy?

His brother was still dead. What is the right thing to say when a twenty-year-old kid has just killed himself?

What the fuck do I say?

Was ‘I’m sorry’ really any better than ‘I’m falling apart because of something that hasn’t even happened yet’?

The phone stopped ringing.

“Oh,” said imaginary-Marco. “He gave up.”

I just sighed. What was I doing?

_ What  _ am  _ I doing? _

Ignoring calls was definitely the wrong thing to do. Christ, aren’t I supposed to be his boyfriend? And yet, there I was; screening his calls like a coward but still unable to let go of his reassuring presence. Like that kid in high school who still had a comfort blanket. 

Shit. That’s what he was. He was my comfort blanket.

I was using him -- beautiful, brilliant Marco who I loved more than anything. I was using him. I’d let him comfort me, please me, bow to my whims. I’d suck him dry and then spit out the husk. I’d use him and abuse him and take all I could but I couldn’t even pick up the fucking phone when he wanted to talk to me?

What sort of heartless vampire am I?

 

***

 

_ Oh, I’m dreaming again. _

_ I can recognise the dreams instantly now. I wish that I couldn’t. I wish I could still have those few moments of blissful ignorance before I realised where I was. But I can’t. _

_ It’s black. All around me, beneath my feet, to the left, to the right, above my head, everywhere is never-ending blackness. _

_ Except right in front of me. _

_ There is a door. I haven’t had this dream before. It’s an ordinary wooden door. It wriggles a little and splits. It splits in two and, like a worm, the two fragments grow into two whole doors.  _

_ Then the doors split again. And again. Over and over until I’m surrounded by them, splayed out like a hand of cards around me. _

_ When I look closer, they’re not identical. One is plain wood, another is painted white, another green. Yet another has a frosted glass panel inserted into it. One’s doorknob is brass, one’s silver, another is so covered in rust I can’t tell what colour it used to be. _

_ And then a door opens. _

_ It flies open. A middle-aged, short, black-haired woman stands inside, a letter clutched to her chest. _

_ “Mina?” she asks. _

_ I don’t answer. I’m not Mina. _

_ The rusted handle screams as it is turned on a different door. _

_ This time it is a man. Tall, blonde, heavily built. _

_ “Thomas?” he asks me. _

_ I shake my head. I’m not Thomas, either. _

_ Another door. “Franz?” _

_ Another. “Hannah?” _

_ “Samuel?” _

_ “Nac?” _

_ “Mylius?” _

_ “Tom?” _

_ “My child?”  _

_ “Is that you, my child?” _

_ “Marco?” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (doesn't Hannah survive, though?)
> 
> Really not happy with this chapter... It's so short but I can't make it any longer without making it drag horribly and this is probably the best place to break it -- plot wise.
> 
> So, everything is shit.  
> That's just about an accurate summary at this point. Everything is shit and Jean has no idea what he's supposed to do. 
> 
> I have a bit of the next chapter written. I wrote it ages ago in one of those 'but I really want to write *this* bit' moments. So I'll probably have to look over it again to make sure it still works and I haven't referenced anything that never actually made the cut. And I know the scene that I want to end that chapter with but I don't know if I'll actually get there or not... 
> 
> Anyway, I'm rambling. I'll go. I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Don't be shy to let me know what you think.   
> Ocean.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco comes back from Canberra emotionally and physically exhausted and Jean's guard is too far down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Australian things:  
> Speedo -- this is short for speedometre (though also the swimwear brand, just not in this context)
> 
> I think that's about it. This is a long one. Enjoy!

My phone had been dead for approximately three days when there was a knock at my door. I kept my laptop charged -- my laptop was where movies and Netflix lived and was therefore useful in distracting me from the real world -- but my phone could go to hell for all I cared. 

It had gone on chiming for a few days. Messages and facebook and emails and notifications. Marco called and I ignored him, feeling like dirt every time. My mum called even though she was just downstairs -- some attempt at alternate communication since her previous efforts weren't working. Connie had sent near constant messages. Really, by the time it finally died, I was relieved. 

No more guilt. 

No more reality. 

And then there was the knock. 

“I'm not hungry, Adrianne,” I called through the closed door. 

Only, when the door opened a crack, it wasn't my nosy older sister who poked her head through. It was a freckled nose and red-ringed, exhausted but somehow still smiling eyes. 

Marco. 

It was amazing how much his eyes told. They smiled because they were Marco’s eyes -- I knew they had to be Marco’s even if my brain was barely interpreting the information from my own eyes -- but at the same time he still looked on the verge of tears. It was a terrible look on him. On him, who so deserved to be happy, it looked worse than it would on literally anyone else. Even when I could only see half his face around the doorframe, I could still make out his whole expression. A sad smile. A forced smile. One that made me want to hit him for lying to me even more than he was lying to himself. 

“Hey,” he said and it was our first meeting all over again. 

I couldn't believe he was there, in the flesh,  _ real _ . And he was standing uninvited in my room. 

Except it wasn't like that at all. Everything had changed. I knew him. I knew this modern Marco. Marco Bodt, the med-student who had to grow up too fast, with his shitty dad and huge family. Marco Bodt who was overly cautious through intersections and couldn't paint to save his life, whose singing voice sounds like cats being stepped on, who was still wearing the same glasses he got when he was fifteen even though the prescription wasn't right anymore. The Marco Bodt who had just buried his baby brother. 

I knew this Marco and everything had changed. He looked at me with so much concern and fondness and all I wanted to do was puke because everything was wrong. He needed comfort and I needed comfort and I already knew who would be missing out on it if there wasn't enough to go around. 

God, I hated myself for it but I knew I'd take it all for myself. 

_ No. No, for a moment, just in this moment of lucidity, think of someone other than yourself.  _

Marco’s comfort. While I still had reign on my emotions, before the next nightmare came, I had to be Marco’s comfort, terrible at it though I was. 

Fuck, I should say something. I should hug him or dry his eyes even though he wasn't crying, I should… 

And then, all of a sudden, it didn't matter what I should do anymore. 

Because the freedom that lucidity brought with it was gone. Because he was there. Because all I could see was him standing there with that liar’s smile on his face, ready to throw himself unto the back burner without regret. My comfort blanket. My lover. My Marco. 

And it  _ was _ Marco. I reached out toward him, searching for those things that made him Marco and no one else. I pressed my jaw to his to feel the prickle of his stubble as it broke the skin punctually at five o'clock. I threaded my fingers through his hair and it was soft and thick and tufty like those fucking marmosets he liked so much. His hands were wide and warm and sure against my back where they'd come up to catch me when I flew at him. Marco will always catch me. 

He was Marco. And I was trembling -- something I only just then realised. 

“Hey,” he said again, whisper-soft like I might drop a grenade and get the fuck out of there if he startled me. 

Startle me, he did, but I had no explosives to drop. Instead, I just leapt back, hands combing through my hair -- unwashed for almost a week -- and lips babbling some nonsense even my own brain couldn't decipher. 

He was looking at me and I was trying so hard to pretend to be okay. And suddenly I was giggling. Good god, I was actually giggling. Then I was talking, saying who-knows-what, and gesturing with my hands -- waving them meaninglessly though the air, really -- as Marco just stood there in the doorway and looked at me. He was looking at me. 

He knew, of course he knew, that I was a complete mess. He'd just come back from the funeral of a suicide victim, there was no way he wouldn't recognise the signs. But I kept babbling and gesturing and fucking giggling because my brain kept telling the rest of me that if I just said enough words, I could make him believe I was a totally in-control, functioning adult. 

Many words = I'm a-okay. 

“Jean.” Marco’s voice was stern. “Stop talking.”

I did. 

Lucidity flooded back. 

Marco looked exhausted. I’d thought he was full zombie before but that was only because I’d never seen him like this. I couldn’t understand how his eyes could keep smiling in a face so hollow and withdrawn. He slouched and wiped a hand over his face, as if he could erase all evidence of the last few months from his features, and slumped down on my bed. And then he looked up at me and smiled. Fucking smiled as if I couldn’t see he was breaking. As if I had no understanding of human emotions whatsoever. As if he expected me to smile back and pretend everything was still fine and dandy. 

_ Stop it _ .

“Are you alright, Jean?” he said and I wanted to punch him.

_ Stop it. Stop it. _

I didn’t say anything.

_ You’re hurting, you bastard. You’re hurting. For once in your life stop trying to comfort everyone else! _

I shook my head -- not in answer to his question, just to clear my thoughts. Then I crawled onto the bed, my knees on either side of his hips, sat in his lap, and just pulled him into my arms. He stiffened -- it was obviously a course of action he hadn’t predicted me taking -- before he wrapped his arms around me, too. 

“You’re alright,” he said and I gripped tighter to his shirt.

“Stop it,” I finally said aloud.

Marco pulled back. “Stop what?”

I looked at him. I really looked at him for a long moment. At that fake, gentle smile pulling at the corners of his mouth and the freckles over his nose and the crease in his brow that hadn’t been there the last time I saw him. And then I glared.

“I’m fine, so leave it,” I said and buried my face back in his shoulder. “Just let me hug you.”

Marco laughed and it set my teeth on edge with how plastic it sounded. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. 

Yes, it was cliche. Yes, the words had been said so many times they’d probably lost all meaning. Yes, it was nothing more than cookie-cutter sympathy. But, at the same time, there was nothing else for me to say. 

He seemed to finally understand. I heard his mouth drop open a fraction beside my ear; a small, sharp intake of air. I’m sure his eyes widened a little in realisation. But I kept my face buried in his shoulder and my arms tightly around his torso. 

His grip slackened a little on my back and I thought he was going to pull away again but he didn’t. He just shifted his hands until he could rub them up and down my spine -- another act of reassurance that he can’t seem to stop doing. 

I just bit my tongue and didn’t say anything else. Getting into a fight while trying to comfort him was the last thing I wanted to do.

“Thank you,” he said at last, whisper-soft and full of feeling. “But I’ve cried enough. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

I swallowed thickly. If Marco wasn’t crying, I sure as hell couldn’t. “If you want to --” I started.

“I’ll let you know,” he finished. “But, right now, this is fine.” His hands stilled and he wrapped his arms around me again. “This is fine. So let’s talk about you.”

I chuckled but it came out strangled and weak. “What d’you mean ‘talk about me’? I'm fine.”

“No you're not, Jean.”

“I'm fine, Marco. Really.”

“ _ No,  _ you're not,” he snapped. 

Regret quickly flooded onto his face and I suddenly felt very out of place on his lap. He sighed and rubbed at his eyes with one hand. I went to stand up, to step away, but he grabbed me by the wrist.

“Please,” he said, looking up at my half standing form through his eyelashes. “Please, don't you lie to me, too.”

And I suddenly realised. How many times did Maximilian Bodt say the words, ‘I'm fine’? Just how much did my ‘I'm fine’ scare him?

I did climb out of Marco’s lap, then, but I didn't stand up or step away. I just slid over so we were sitting side by side on the bed, thighs touching, my wrist still trapped in his grasp. His fingers loosened easily, as if he hadn't realised how tight he'd been holding on, when I tapped them with mine. We pivoted, palm against palm, until our hands were interlaced. Still, he didn't feel close enough so I leant my weight against his side and let my head drop onto his shoulder. 

There. That was close enough. With thighs touching and interlocked fingers and his warmth all up my side and the weight of my own head cradled by his bonier-than-usual shoulder. And when we were close enough, when I was almost certain that he couldn't immediately run away, I spoke. 

“You ever been to Brisbane?”

“Brisbane?”

“Yeah.”

“Only for hockey.”

I hummed in response and changed the topic a little -- approaching this shitstorm that my life had become from a different angle. 

“How long do you still have off from training?”

“I go back on Tuesday.” Marco’s voice was so warm and comforting I found myself thinking of the way he might speak to some scared and dangerous animal. 

“Fancy a road trip, then?”

There was silence for a second before he answered. “To Brisbane?”

“Yeah. There's a gallery I have to show you.”

 

**

 

Marco didn't stay over that night -- I would have no idea how to explain his presence to my parents if he did, not to mention that he needed to pack if we were going to pull our impromptu road trip -- but he did stay for dinner. And it was perhaps the most awkward dinner I had ever attended. 

It began with Adrianne stopping me in the doorway and gesturing towards where Marco sat, making small talk with my parents at the dining table, his face showing a smile that screamed how uncomfortable he was to those that knew him but only seemed polite and friendly to those that didn’t.

“This the reason you realised you weren’t entirely straight?” she asked with a smirk.

“Fuck off,” I replied. 

From there it went to my parents quizzing him about every aspect of my uni life, dropping more than a few hints that I had barely left my room for weeks. Marco shot me a glance across the table. It was minuscule, barely there for a second, but I could read it completely; a tired and sad betrayal. 

‘You said you were fine,’ it said. 

My dad was doing his usual awkwardly casual thing. Where, in his attempt to appear casual and ‘down with the kids’, he just came across as a creepy old man. He was overly friendly, patting Marco on the back every few seconds and laughing far too hard at anything he said, playing up his role as the macho, manly patriarch by expressing his disappointment in my choice of courses. 

“Medicine! Medicine is a real degree, something employable! I don’t know what all this ‘visual art’ could possibly lead to.”

I knew he didn’t really think that -- actually, he might. It was a real concern, one I’d had myself a fair few times. But I knew that, even if he  _ did  _ think that, he would never stop me from doing something I really wanted to do. It was just that he felt he had a role to play and that role was apparently a complete dick. 

He was usually supportive, I just had to prove to him just how much I wanted to do it first. That was the part that took a while. 

Mum brought up the sensitive topic of girlfriends, at which everyone in the room under the age of thirty stiffened, before Marco laughed, bumped his foot against mine under the table, and brushed the question aside. 

Until, at last, we were standing outside the front door, alone except for the gentle whir of suburbia all around. 

He stood there, the light from the front windows reflecting in his eyes as he stood a step below me. He batted the light away with thick lashes and kept staring up at me. His hands were pushed deep into the pockets of his coat and his lips were in a thin line. I watched as the winter night settled over him and he shivered but still he kept staring at me, a soft frown forming on his face. 

Good god, did I want to touch him.

There was a gap between his arms and his sides, a small triangle of air created as he bent his arms to reach his pockets, and I wanted nothing more than to fill it with my hands, to run my fingers across his waist, to push open his coat and feel the thin cotton of his shirt pressed against his skin. He was leaving, he was walking away and though I knew he’d be back in the morning in his beat up truck and torn jeans and air of forced happiness, I couldn’t stand to watch him just turn and go without reaffirming where we stood. Not when I knew what I was going to show him tomorrow.

It felt wrong and there was definitely some duplicity to my own feelings. We were temporarily parting ways, a ‘see you later’ moment, and that usually meant I’d get to touch him for a a little while -- a hug or a kiss or a squeezed hand and a smile. But that wasn’t happening. He was just standing there, gazing up at me with that frown. The other half of me felt like I shouldn’t touch him; not when my family were behind the door at my back, not when I had denied what we were all evening.

I felt dirty, gritty, like I’d done something horrifically wrong. And I had. Christ, I really had. He’d been all smiles and charm with my family. No matter how easily I could read his discomfort, I was sure they wouldn’t. And I hadn’t… I’d never even addressed our relationship -- not even to Adrianne. I was lying to my family by omission and hiding Marco away like some piss-stained sheets; some mark of shame I would rather let fester than show to my parents. 

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Marco said, breaking my chain of thought. “It’s a long drive.”

I didn’t trust my stupid tongue with words so I just nodded in reply. 

Marco didn’t make any move to leave. Just staring on. Then, at last, he looked away. He looked down. His shoes shuffled and scuffed at the concrete steps. He opened his mouth but no words came out for a long time. When they finally did, they were cracked with emotion and barely audible.

“Kiss me,” is what he said. 

I wanted to. You know that I wanted to. I wanted absolutely nothing more in the world than to run my thumb across his cheekbone, slide my hand onto that triangle of exposed waist, and press my lips to his until we both forgot where we were. 

But my answer must have taken a second too long because Marco was suddenly talking again.

“It’s just, after two hours of playing your friend, I would love to know that I haven’t just misinterpreted our whole… that I haven’t misread what we are.”

I allowed myself half a second to frown at the way he’d skirted around the word ‘relationship’ before I gave into desire. My hand trembled as it reached forward and Marco watched it with strange mix of emotions on his face, but it finally settled on his cheek. The other hand left the joys of that exposed waist for a moment and came up to land on the side of his neck, thumb brushing over the soft skin below his ear where that freckle was, the one that peeked in and out of his hair at his every move -- just where it would be in another life filled with blood and fear. And then the rest of me was leaning in, noses brushing with a silk touch, until his wind-chapped lips scratched against mine. 

“I’ll tell them,” I said, pulling away barely a few centimetres.

“You don’t have to,” he breathed back.

“Yes I do.”  _ You deserve at least that much. _

Marco hummed, though whether it was in thought or agreement I couldn’t quite tell. Instead, I watched as his eyes flicked down to my mouth again and felt his grip tighten on my arms before he pulled me back into the kiss.

This one was equally as soft, equally as short, and it felt like a reply.

_ Are we going to be okay? _ I had asked.

_ For sure _ , he replied.

“I’ll see you in the morning?” he said aloud. 

I nodded again with a small smile and I was rewarded by the return of his own smile. He kissed me quickly on the cheek, squeezed my hand one last time and headed back to where his car was waiting.

 

**

 

The car was cold in that sort of dry way -- cold and dry and dusty like something left in the back of a cupboard and then long forgotten -- and we sat in silence. Marco’s radio was broken, could only pick up the classical channel or something in some Eastern European language neither of us understood, and his truck was about fifteen years too old for bluetooth or an aux cord. So there was nothing. No music, no radio, no conversation. We just sat in silence as the ancient truck hurtled down the freeway at 110. 

Marco watched the road, as he should, and I just stared out the window. I watched as the motorway swerved away from the coast, the spindly, thin trees that grew in the sandy soil thickening and becoming palms and ferns and paperbark gums. The country was flat but I suppose that was to be expected, I suppose. It  _ was  _ unbelievably old and I was already worn down at twenty-one. The greenery blinked in and out of existence, at times replaced with concrete barriers or the insides of a small hill that had been blasted through to keep the road straight and true. Then the paperbarks and carefully placed ferns and ornamental grasses thinned out, eventually disappearing altogether, and were replaced with just plain old ordinary grass, browned and dry. We were enough in the middle of nowhere that no government would bother planting along the road. 

They were farms, I’d be willing to bet. There were probably sheep or cattle somewhere away from the road.

But then the scenery stopped changing. Open and browned fields with a handful of grumpy cows. Fields full of sugar cane, half harvested. Banana plantations. Canola farms. Sure, all different sorts of farm but all farms nonetheless. 

I opted for counting road-kill, instead. 

“Are you cold?” Marco’s voice startled me out of my haze just I saw my fourteenth insideout kangaroo. 

“Huh?” I said automatically before looking around as if I could somehow see the answer to his question. “Uh, not really.”

Of course the fucking heating was broken as well and it was till early morning. It couldn't have been more than seven degrees outside. 

“I’m pretty sure my hockey kit is still in the back. It’ll probably stink but my tracksuit jacket’s in there if you need it.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. 

Fifteen minutes later, as my fingers began to numb, I reluctantly reached back and grabbed the sports bag off the back seat.

“This fucking reeks, Marco…” I complained as I pulled it on. It must have been back there, fermenting, since before he’d left for Canberra. 

Marco laughed. “I did warn you.”

Silence again for a minute or so. I watched him drive, eyes alert and flicking from the road, to the rearview mirror, to the speedo, to the road again. And suddenly it dawned on me that he was driving me all the way to fucking  _ Brisbane _ for a reason I still hadn’t told him. 

That didn’t mean I suddenly had the courage to put it into words. 

It just meant I summoned enough courage to say, “Thank you,’ with all the sincerity I could muster. 

Marco only smiled. 

 

**

 

Almost five hours after we left Trost, Marco pulled into the carpark of the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art. 

“Now what?” he said as we stood in the spacious entry foyer, staring up at the list of current exhibitions, having already paid the entry fee.

The French realism exhibition was gone, of course. The majority of it had been on loan from around the world and I’d last seen it six years before. I could only hope that  _ that painting  _ was one of the few the QAGOMA actually owned. 

“I guess…” I said, “the International and Asian collection?”

Marco nodded, slipped his hand into mine, and we turned left down the corridor, the echo of our footsteps reverberated seemingly endlessly against the polished concrete. 

I kept my eyes down as we went, not wanting to think about anything. The painting might not be there and I couldn’t decide whether I would be glad or not. It could be gone and I’d never have to explain anything -- just live with the knowledge that I’d dragged Marco almost four hundred kilometres up the coast for no reason whatsoever. Or the painting could be there and he’d know everything. I wouldn’t be alone in my memories anymore but then he’d know -- know how much I had broken over something that hadn’t even happened yet, know how weak I was, know just what sort of doomed future awaited us all. I’d have to tell him just what sort of doomed future awaited  _ him _ .

I decided I didn’t want to know, either way. I just kept my head down and walked, focusing all my thoughts on how warm Marco’s hand was in mine. 

“What am I looking for, exactly?” asked Marco and I had to raise my head. 

We were already in the International and Asian collection. Oil paintings and statues and ancient things stood all around and my mouth felt disgustingly dry.

“French,” I forced out of my mouth. “It’s a French painting by an unknown artist.”

Marco nodded and took another step forward, sweeping his gaze around the room with an impassive face. Then he stopped. His face changed. And he started walking through the exhibition like he was being pulled by a thread. He turned a corner and there it was. They still had it, after all. 

_ No _ , I suddenly realised _ , I really  _ don’t _ want to do this. _

He didn’t even seem to notice how my feet dragged as he walked straight up to  _ the  _ painting that had started all this shit. 

“This one?” he breathed.

I nodded stiffly but I don’t think he even noticed, his gaze was locked so firmly on the painting -- on Jeanne’s serene expression.

It was exactly how I remembered: paint thick on the canvas, almost as much a sculpture as it was a painting, Jeanne’s blue dress so bright and happy compared to the brown fields  and the muddy cows behind her, the light glowing vibrant orange in the setting sun and the rippled reflection of it all in the lake. Only, now that I had been there so many times in my dreams, I saw new things. The small tear along her bodice. The teasing smirk in her eyes that clearly said, ‘Monsieur Bosch, do you understand what you have just said?’ Pierre, the farmer who used to come over to see what exactly we were doing by his lake, standing in the background, a hoe perched against his shoulder as he wiped the sweat from his brow. 

“Jean,” said Marco suddenly as he took his hand from mine, “are you sure it’s me you want?”

Neither of us said anything for a moment, both glued to the painting on the wall.

“Of course,” I said at last, although my voice was monotonous and my eyes didn’t shift in their stare. “Who else would I want?”

Surely he wasn’t thinking of Mikasa? Like that had ever gone anywhere.

Marco took a step away from the painting, away from me.

“All this time...” His voice was barely there. “All this time, you’ve been saying so many things I didn’t understand and I always thought, ‘that’s just the way Jean is’ but... now? I don’t know what to think.”

He took another step backward and I turned to face him, suddenly terrified he might just turn and flee in the face of this unbelievable truth that I knew he had to be understanding. He looked back at me, ‘betrayal’ practically burnt into his forehead. 

“This is you.” His voice cracked. “Isn’t it?”

I didn’t reply.

“This is you, isn’t it, Jean? This is what all those cryptic things you’ve said have been about.  _ Her _ ?”

I still couldn’t bring myself to speak. I’d never seen Marco mad and I never wanted to. Really, he still wasn’t mad. He was hurt and that was so much worse. 

“Jean!” his voice was pleading, begging me to explain it all away so we could go back to the way we were.

But we couldn’t. I’d already ruined all that. Just by coming here I'd ruined everything. I’d hacked through it with a machete and left it in pieces behind me on the jungle path. This was a mistake, a horrible mistake. 

I closed my eyes and nodded once. “It’s me.”

Marco went creepily still. All the pain and almost-anger from moments before was gone. He just took one more step away from me and ran a hand down his face.

We didn’t move in the silence that followed. We both just turned back to the painting, mirroring the stillness in the almost empty gallery.

“Who painted this?” Marco asked quietly, calmly, and with a complete  _ lack of emotion _ in his voice that made me shiver. 

“I don-”

“Who painted this, Jean?” he said again.

I swallowed it down – my fear, my tears, the pain in my chest as Marco came to his senses and forgot anything he ever liked about me – I swallowed it all down.

I was only touching what was hurting him so much with my fingertips. I couldn’t fully grasp it. I didn’t understand completely but I knew it was my fault. I was the reason Marco was in pain.

I couldn’t lie to him again. He’d asked me not to lie to him. I didn't  _ want _ to lie to him. I didn't want him to go. 

But I’d already started it. There were only tattered vines behind me then. Maybe the truth would piece them back together. But I doubted it.

“Marco,” I said at last.

“What?” The venom in his voice could rival Jeanne’s Papa’s. 

“No,” I said softly, still not daring to peel my eyes off the floor, “that’s his name. The painter’s. Marco Bosch.”

Silence. Then Marco laughed. It was a chuckle, disbelieving and cynical, and it bounced off the white tiled floor, mingled with the carefully controlled lighting in the empty room.

“You’re kidding.” He was still laughing. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

My silence told him I wasn’t.

“Oh, and I suppose I look like him too? All this time... All this  _ fucking  _ time. ‘Oh, these are new.’” He mimed plucking his glasses from his face. “’There’s no way you’re not good at art!’ All this time it was never me. You were never looking at me. You never cared about me at all. It was all  _ him _ . It was Marco fucking  _ Bosch  _ you wanted all along!” Another dry laugh slipped out of him and I wanted to pretend I couldn’t see the tears in his eyes. I’d always loved Marco’s laugh but not like this. I was supposed to be his comfort. I was supposed to be doing something good. I wasn't supposed to take his bruised heart and crush it into the ground. 

But I couldn’t. The tears were real. I really had just made the person I loved more than anyone else in the world cry because of nothing more than my own selfishness. What sort of person did that make me? No, don’t answer that. I already know.

“But he  _ is  _ you!” I shouted in my desperation to hold onto at least a scrap of human decency. 

Marco was shaking his head. His eyes had gone cold.

“No he’s not,” he said. “ _ I’m _ me.”

He turned away from me. My hands twitched to reach out to him but I held them back.

I didn’t deserve to hold Marco anymore. He was right. He wasn’t Marco Bosch. They looked the same. They sounded the same. Fuck, they might even have the same  _ soul _ , if such a thing exists. But Marco Bosch died in 1871. Jeanne died alongside him. If I hadn’t remembered anything, where would I be right then? Would I have even bothered trying to get close to Marco Bodt? Maybe I  _ was  _ only using him. Maybe, I couldn’t stop being Jeanne. Maybe it really was Marco Bosch I’d loved all along.

“I won’t be a replacement anymore, Jean.” His voice had completely broken and he didn’t even try to hide the tears in his words as he hurried passed the security guard at the door and out of the gallery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhh.... I'm sorry. I always am for being away so long but here we are again, months after the last chapter. Thank you all for not being impatient with me. I'm a slow worker. 
> 
> I feel like I should talk about Jean's parents for a second. They're not homophobic in the slightest, I should make that clear. They do assume he's straight but I'm pretty sure most parents do. Jean isn't afraid to tell them about Marco because he's afraid they'll be disgusted or disown him or anything. It's just an extension of his 'role' that he feels he has to play. It's breaking the role that he's afraid of. Because then he'd have no idea who he is. So, it's less that his parents are homophobic and more the extreme repression and flat out ignoring of his own internalised homophobia. This boy really needs a therapist for all the shit that goes through his head...
> 
> That gallery scene: I wrote this the same day I wrote the 'I'm so fucking selfish' scene so it's been sitting in my google docs for a very, very long time. I'm so glad I finally get to use it. It's a bit of a complicated scene in that Marco, who's usually the overly understanding, empathetic to a fault, smiley fix-it man, is just so over the world's shit by this point that he can't see how much he's hurting Jean. I'm not saying it's entirely Marco's fault. I mean, Jean definitely shares some of the blame for being such a terrible communicator. But, man, that was a fun but sad scene to write.
> 
> One last thing: do you have any idea how hard it is to write winter and being cold when I'm sitting here in my underwear, directly in front of a fan and still sweating my arse off? It's so fucking hot at the moment. It's supposed to be 41 next weekend. I will be nothing more than a puddle on the floor. And I live in the south. Oh, that's another thing (sorry, I know I said that was the last one). The 'It couldn't be more than seven degrees outside' is a slight dig at my own family. We don't visit our Brisbane relatives that often anymore but, when we did, there was this one lunch in the middle of winter. My aunt was all, 'it's been so cold lately! I'm sure it was less than ten degrees this morning!' and all us Canberrans were just like, 'hahahaha it was -4 when we got on the plane this morning, you pansy."   
> I guess the tables have turned. I'd take a -4 morning over this heat.
> 
> Thanks again for sticking with me. There's probably something in this chapter I should apologise for (the cliff hanger? the vague descriptions of long car rides? the uneven skipping nature of it? the completely different voice to the rest of the fic? IDK take your pick). Still, I'm going to go. I hope you enjoyed it all the same,  
> Ocean.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Never say that nothing else could go wrong. The universe will always take it as a challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Australian Things:  
> Bikey gangs = you can probably infer that these are motorcycle gangs, which we have... not necessarily an epidemic of but have seen a major crackdown on in recent years and so have appeared a lot in media.   
> Julie Bishop = is the minister for foreign affairs and deputy leader of the Liberal Party (which is actually our conservative major party, just to be confusing) which happens to be in government at the moment. But she's not the vice prime-minister because the libs are in a coalition with the Nationals and... really, that's more detail than you need to know. She looks like a lizard-person and that's all that matters.  
> Byron Bay = not really relevant, but Byron Bay is the most Easterly point on the Australian mainland. The more you know :)  
> European school vs Aus school = this is heavily based on the Italian exchange student my family hosted a few years ago. Apparently our school is stupidly easy for the rest of the world. If that's not a kick to my ego, I don't know what is.
> 
> A short disclaimer: I have never actually played mario kart. You may all now roast me for that.

Has anyone else looked at Julie Bishop and thought, ‘you’re totally an iguana in a human skin’? Or maybe a goanna. Just some large lizard that was pottering along one day, happened upon a hollowed out human and crawled inside to begin its career in politics. I think it’s something about her eyes in combination with those cheekbones that comes across as distinctly reptilian.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I need to. If I don’t, if I don’t forcefully turn my mind onto other things, I’ll remember Marco’s face as he said ‘Don’t you lie to me, too.’ Or the way his voice cracked at, ‘I won’t be a replacement anymore.’ Or the hollow sound of his footsteps echoing against polished concrete in the empty gallery as he walked away.

So let’s talk about Julie Bishop and her alien features and the old lady next to me on the bus back to Trost who made me think of reptilian humans in the first place. 

It didn’t seem fair to ask Marco to put up with my presence on a five hour long car trip when he would clearly rather stab me in the eye at the moment.

The old lady is really starting to give me the creeps and I focused on that; on her cloud of white-white hair and the gleeful smile behind her tortoise-shell glasses as she made her way steadily through  _ A Clockwork Orange _ and the fact that we’re about to come to the end of the first hour of this trip and she has yet to touch the back rest once. She’s not human. And every now and again, she’ll peel herself away from dystopian torture to give me a worried look and a grandmotherly smile as I pretend to sleep against the window.

As I pretend to sleep against the window and force my mind away from its natural path.

Just five hours to Byron Bay and I’d be free of her. Then it’s just a leisurely additional three hour different bus into Trost. But eight hours surrounded by aliens and the smell of other people’s sweat was infinitely better than five watching as Marco’s heart broke over and over again.

Oh god, I was thinking about him again.

His crestfallen face. The way he dropped my hand like he’d done something wrong. The way his nose flared when he was trying not to cry. Christ, now  _ I _ wanted to stab me in the eye.

What had I done?

What the fuck had I done?

And I think the worst part was how much I wanted to touch him, to cradle him in my arms and do my damnedest to make the monsters go away. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed. Because, as much as my heart tore seeing Marco Bodt breaking in front of me, I still couldn’t deny that I’d fallen for Marco Bosch first.

I could still be looking for him, searching him out in any way I could, latching onto his memory and projecting my feelings onto a person who was some else entirely. That wasn’t a crazy theory. It was entirely possible. 

Didn’t make losing Marco Bodt hurt any less, though.

A different topic. I had to find a different topic.

I found myself thinking about Max. Because I’d spent every waking moment since he died, berating myself for not thinking more about Marco – the one left behind – but now I couldn’t. Thoughts of Marco would have me crying on a very public five hour bus ride, with the old lady beside me offering her awkward, stranger’s sympathy. So I thought about Max and the time he’d sat with his head on the table and sauce in his hair for ten minutes because he thought he’d embarrassed himself. I thought about that awkward, lopsided smile he had and the knowing smirk he’d pull out when I did something that gave away just how smitten I was with his brother. I thought about how hard he was obviously trying in retrospect and suddenly that old lady was placing that comforting hand between my shoulder blades.

I wasn’t crying. 

Not yet.

Because as soon as the thought occurred to me that that awkward smile and that embarrassed face and that heart that just kept trying – that that boy with a terrible sense of direction and that observant, analytical mind was gone and not ever coming back, I just… stopped. It was unfathomable. My brain shut down.

No, I wasn’t crying but I must have looked fucking terrified, staring into the distance as all the truth in the world crumbled to the ground.

 

**

 

The beginning of the semester took me somewhat by surprise. One minute I was bludging around at my parents’ place, feeling sorry for myself, trying to call Marco and also, somehow, forcing myself  _ not _ to call Marco. The next minute Connie was texting me to bring my keys around to the dorm because he’d locked his inside at the beginning of the winter holidays. I didn’t have any of my textbooks for the new semester. I hadn’t even looked at my classes yet. I wouldn’t even be enrolled if I hadn’t enrolled in a full year’s worth of courses at the beginning of the year. 

“Dude,” Connie said as soon as he saw me, “what the fuck happened to you?”

“What are you talking about?” I said as I threw him the keys and collapsed against the hallway wall. 

Connie shot me a dubious glance as he stuck my keys in the door. “Are you sure? Because you look like shit. When was the last time you slept?”

_ An hour ago _ .

It was often easier to just sleep rather than think about things, at least then I knew who the monsters were and how to fight them. Let the monsters come. Let the paranoia and twitching and constant fear throughout my waking hours come. Anything was better than sitting around and replaying the scene in the gallery in my head over and over, shouting at myself to say something -- to explain it better or lie or reach out and grab him. 

No, the problem wasn’t that I hadn’t slept. The problem was that I slept all the time and the nightmares weren’t going away. I’m pretty sure I was actually trembling as I sat there, slumped against the wall of the hallway of floor D, Building 12 of the student residency. 

I just shrugged. “I’m fine, Connie.”

I knew my eyes were dark and sunken. The skin on my nose was dry and peeling. My lips were cracked and my hair had weeks’ worth of grease in it. I knew I looked like death but I wasn’t going to acknowledge it. 

 

If moving back to the dorms was a surprise, the start of classes was a fucking kick in the teeth. Unprepared, overslept and unmotivated, I’m pretty sure I missed the first week of classes without even noticing. Either that or I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did because that first day back -- the first day I actually went to class, anyway -- I had absolutely no idea what was going on. And it definitely showed. 

Connie was unsympathetic. I think that’s because that was his usual approach to the beginning of the semester -- pretend it wasn’t coming until the very last minute and then pretend you haven’t just crashed straight into a wall when it finally hits you. Armin might have understood better if he was ever in the fucking dorm. His four committees were keeping him busy, as usual. I don’t even know if he was still sleeping there. Bert was still coasting on the ease of switching from European school to Australian school (His first semester, I’d caught him just laughing in his room during o-week and, when I asked him what it was, he’d said, “You only have to do four classes! This isn’t school!”) and didn’t seem to fathom that it was possible to be swamped down in course work. 

My usual sympathetic ear was silent. I still couldn’t bring myself to contact him. 

But, hellish as it was, uni made missing Marco easier. It was almost not a chore to pull my body out of bed in the morning -- still convulsing from nightmares and freezing with cold sweat -- and amble down to the bus stop, to sit in class and pretend to know what I was talking about, to spend the rest of the day in the studio painting spirals on newspaper because I couldn’t think of a topic for my next project. It was easy to laugh with Connie or make breakfast with Armin or have lunch with Bert and Reiner after their rowing training. Life was easy, despite the bags beneath my eyes. Life had a routine.

It still felt wrong without him, though. 

I saw him maybe a week or two into the semester. He was with people I didn’t know. Probably classmates. They were sprawled out across the tables of one of the cafes in the quad, enjoying the slight shift in weather towards spring. He was laughing and I walked away. 

Armin asked me about it one day, as an afterthought when he was already halfway out the door. Just a casual, “Jean, are you okay?” and an equally casual, “Yeah, of course,” and the topic was gone. 

Perhaps I should have said something, though. I mean, I could have at least told him we’d broken up and I wasn’t exactly okay about that. 

Had we broken up, though? Neither of us had said anything explicitly to that point. But we hadn’t spoken a single word to each other for almost a month and we hadn’t exactly parted on the best terms. It was implied, wasn’t it?

It was over.

 

**

 

I came back from classes one day to find the dorm filled with people. The living room was swimming with the sound of life. It was Bert’s dinner night and so Reiner was there to fill in for him as usual. 

Never let Bert near a kitchen unless you want some serious incentive to give up food forever. 

The two of them, but mostly Reiner, were draped off the back of the couch shouting encouragement in both English and German at Connie and Eren as they played Mario Kart. Sasha sat on the floor between Connie’s knees. Every time he pulled ahead she’d punch both hands in the air, effectively blinding him in her celebration, causing him to fall behind again. Mikasa sat stoically in the other armchair, reading a book. I couldn’t see the title from the door but it had the characteristic orange-cream banding of a Penguin Classic. Armin stood behind the two Germans, bouncing on the balls of his feet and leaning left and right with the turns. It was him who first noticed me standing there in the doorway.

“Jean!” He smiled at me. “Welcome back!”

I gave a half hearted wave and dumped my backpack on the ground at the entrance. 

“Hey,” I said. “What’s going on? Some sort of party?”

The only one missing from our group was Marco and I felt incredibly guilty that I might be keeping him from his friends just because we were… well, because we were very cracked if not broken entirely. 

“No, no,” replied Armin. “Eren and ‘Kasa were on their way to the beach and just got roped into this whole mess.”

The others were expected. Reiner was Bert’s cooking proxy and Sasha pretty much lived in our dorm by that point.

The noise rose from the couch, reaching a fever pitch, until it suddenly overflowed in Connie’s loud swearing and a proud whoop from Eren. 

“Better luck next time, Springer,” he laughed as Connie kicked him petulantly in the shoe. 

Eren’s phone rang – some annoying techno noise – and he froze mid-laugh to wrench it from his pocket.

“Eren, you okay?” asked Connie.

“Yeah, it should be fine. This is just my dad’s ringtone and he basically never calls so it caught me by surprise.” Eren waved us away with a smile and headed out into the hallway to take the call. 

Sasha shared a look with Connie and the two of them crept over to the door and pressed their ears against it. 

“Guys, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Armin, standing up and reaching out for them but with seemingly no real intention of actually touching them. He kept casting glances at Mikasa who looked like she might just blow her top. 

The real reason it probably wasn’t a good idea was that Mikasa would probably kill anyone who heard something Eren didn’t want them to hear.

I put my hand on her shoulder and she turned to me, glare still out in full force. “Relax, Mi. They’re just having a bit of fun. And it’s not like they can actually hear anything through the door anyway.”

Her glare only darkened and I felt like my hand must be carrying the plague with the way she tried to shake it from her shoulder. 

Just as I said that, we  _ did  _ hear something through the door.

“What do you fucking mean, she’s gone?” Eren’s disembodied voice shouted.

Mikasa was suddenly gone and the door thrown wide open. 

Eren turned to stare at her, his eyes more panicked than I could have ever imagined them being. He hurried his sister over with a beckoning hand and the two of them pressed their faces close to the phone, cheeks touching, straining to hear their father’s words.

The rest of us were dead silent. So silent we could hear the electronic static of Eren’s dad’s reply, though words were still impossible to make out.

“Grisha, what’s happening?” Mikasa’s voice was calm despite the bead of sweat trickling down her forehead.

I thought I made out a shocked voice say her name in response before the static reverted back to indecipherable white-noise. 

Then silence again. Neither of the siblings spoke as they listened with eyes wide to the voice down the line. None of us bystanders spoke; we felt we had no right to. 

What the fuck was happening? What could possibly make Eren – loud, annoying Eren – lost for words? What could make the infallible, unbeatable, lion-hearted Mikasa afraid?

Eventually, Eren spoke again. “I’ll come home,” he said. “You don’t have to go anywhere, I’ll come home and then everything will be alright.”

Silence while the reply came. 

“No, no, if you’re going than we’re going together. Dad, I’ll just come home and then we can...”

He must have been interrupted. 

“Fine. I guess. I just -- Well, if you say so. I’m gonna trust you then, Dad. Don’t do something stupid. You better make it back home eventually.”

“When are you leaving?” Mikasa asked.

“That soon?” Eren replied to his father’s reply.

“Would you still like us to come home?” Mikasa spoke again and everyone waited for the reply. “To sort out the stuff for Bailey or talk to the neighbours or anything like that? No? Alright then. Travel safe then, Grisha. Let us know if anything changes.” I assumed Bailey was a pet since I’d never heard Eren say he had other siblings.

It was Mikasa who plucked the phone from her brother’s hand and hung up. He was frozen, staring at the place in his palm where his father’s voice had just been. 

Of course it was Armin who first spoke. He knew the Jaegers almost as well as their children did. “What’s wrong?” he said, pushing through the rest of us gawkers who crowded the doorway.

Eren turned to look at him, eyes completely blank. “My mum...” was all he managed to get out.

“Carla’s gone missing.” Mikasa explained for him. “The police don’t seem to be trying very hard to find her. They probably think she ran away by herself, to escape her marriage or children or something.” Eren’s face winced at the mention of children. “But none of her clothes are gone and, though her handbag is gone, a lot of important stuff wasn’t in there. Her Medicare card, her passport, her bus card, even her bank card wasn’t in there. Whatever actually happened, Grisha isn’t happy with the police response so he’s going to look for her. Eren wanted to go with him but we’re in the middle of the semester and Grisha said that Carla would have wanted Eren to keep doing what he loved doing and learning the things he found interesting.”

“So you’re staying here?” Armin asked.

“We’ll stay here until we hear from him again but if things get worse you can bet we’re not going to just sit around here doing nothing,” she said.

“Sure...” Armin took another step towards his two childhood friends and gathered them both in his arms. “Do whatever you feel is right. Everything can still turn out alright. It will. I know it will. You’ll see.”

I watched as Mikasa wrapped one arm around him, her hand fisting in the fabric of one sleeve. ‘Thank you,’ her actions said, though her voice said nothing.

“Fff…” Eren was muttering, crushing his face against the top of Armin’s shoulder. Armin pulled away a little to look into his friend’s face.  “Fff…” Eren was still going, the sound getting louder and more desperate with every passing second. “Ffffuck!” he screamed.

A door down the hallway opened a little before closing again.

“What the fuck are the police doing?” he cried. “How can they just assume she got sick of us and ran away? Isn’t it their job to  _ investigate _ ? I can’t do this after all, ‘Kasa. I just gotta go home. I can’t leave it all up to those lazy, useless fucks.”

“Eren, what about uni?” said Armin. 

“It can go to hell for all I care. My mum isn’t the sort of person to just run off without saying anything. You know that, Ar! You’ve met her. You know her. How many times have you come over and Mum’s helped you with some stupid art project you decided had to be perfect? What about all the times she came over to teach you about your dad’s garden? Do you think she’s the sort of person who would leave us all behind without a word? Something’s happened and I can’t just go to class like everything’s still normal. No, fuck it, I’m going home. I have to look for her. If the police aren’t looking for her then I’ll just have to do it.”

With that, he pushed away his two best friends and stormed off down the hallway, Armin close on his heels and pleading with him to calm down. Us, out-of-place onlookers, turned to Mikasa.

“He’s not really going all the way home, is he?” asked Bert.

She looked off down the hallway to where Eren’s back was just disappearing round the corner into the stairwell. “I doubt it,” she said. “He’s probably going to surf, fill his head with nothing but sand and waves so he can forget for a while.” Then she headed off after her brother too, her footsteps unhurried and deliberate.

 

**

 

When they still weren’t back two hours later, Reiner sent me after them. Dinner was almost ready and apparently Armin was too engrossed in recounting every amazing moment of his Africa trip in some sort of panic-stricken enthusiasm as he tried to distract himself from what had just happened to go and get his best friends so that they could eat obscure but delicious German food. 

For some reason, I seemed like the next best option. God only knows why they thought that. 

It wasn’t hard to spot them on the beach. Spring may be approaching but most locals wouldn’t brave the water without a wetsuit, especially not at this time of day. Mikasa was a dark patch on the brilliant sand, arms wrapped around her knees. Eren was a glowing orange dot being tossed in the blue-green soup of the ocean. 

I called out to Mikasa and she turned to look at me. I got the feeling that she knew why I was there before I’d even crossed the beach to where she was. She just stared at me for a moment, raised one eyebrow in question, then nodded and turned back to her speck of a brother. 

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and slumped down in the sand beside her.

Neither of us said anything for a long while. I was once again completely lost on what I was  _ supposed  _ to say. 

God, I wished I was the sort of person who was the good sort of honest -- the sort who could tell people what they needed to hear when they needed to hear it -- rather than the awkward sort of honest who fumbled for a long while on what someone wanted to hear before eventually just blurting out the first thing that came to mind. But I wasn’t. I’m still not that sort of honest. So I pulled my jacket a little tighter, watched as the dying sun sent one last wave of golden light out over the ocean, as Eren surfed and fell and climbed back onto his board to do it all again. I just sat there, searching for what I was supposed to say to Mikasa when her mum had disappeared to nobody-knew-where.

“Reiner says food’s almost done,” is what I eventually said. 

Mikasa just nodded silently and kept her eyes trained on Eren.

I shifted awkwardly where I sat, filling my pockets with sand -- yet another pair of jeans that would never hold a phone safely again -- and I chewed the inside of my cheek. I fiddled, tapping my phone against the backs of my nails for that sharp little clicking noise that it made, as I tried to sort through my thoughts. 

Here was my attempt at honesty:

“Uh, I don’t… I mean… I’m sorry about your mum.”

Mikasa just hummed. Eren was thrown so violently by a wave that his leg rope tugged the board into the air as he fell into the water. 

“You know,” said Mikasa at last, voice even and cold and beautiful as always, “I killed someone once.”

What?

“Holy fuck, Mikasa?” I said.

“I shot someone. And then they died.”

_ What? _

My jaw had fallen open and I could only stare back at her wordlessly.

“They deserved it,” she said at last, eyes still locked on her brother. “They killed my parents. But, I guess, by that logic, I deserve to die too.”

“Oh my god…” To be fair, that probably wasn’t the best thing to say in the situation but I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. 

Mikasa stretched her legs out in front of her, leaning back on her hands and finally looking away from the sea to the steadily greying sky. 

“I was never charged,” she said. “I don’t think the police even realised it was me. I mean, I was only nine at the time. We lived in probably the worst part of town -- which isn’t saying much. That town was miniature. It was fine in summer, when it was filled with tourists, but when they left it was hardly the seaside paradise people tried to market it as. A couple weeks before, someone shot in our living room windows. They just drove by, filled the house with bullets, and then kept driving. We were out at the time. Obviously, the cops looked into it. It looked like classic gang warfare. But, before they’d gotten anywhere in their investigations, there were three men in my house and I was locked in a bathroom while they shot both my parents in the head. So, when I finally got out, I grabbed the nearest guy’s gun and pulled the trigger.” She let out a short chuckle. “Broke my wrist with the recoil.” She shook her head. “Funniest part is that my parents died for nothing. It was my neighbours who got mixed up with some bikey gang and… well, apparently nobody ever thought to double check the address before they came for revenge. But, you’ll understand now why I can’t exactly see those same incompetent police finding Carla.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked quietly.

Mikasa finally looked at me, then, raised her eyebrow again and gave me a half smile. “Because it shouldn’t matter anymore,” she said in a tone that clearly sounded like she could make that true if she just said it enough times. “I’ve got Eren now. And because I saw Marco on Tuesday and he didn’t look okay. I thought you might need some advice I heard long after I ought to have heard it.”

I winced and looked away. I felt, rather than saw, Mikasa’s eyes shift back to the water.

“In a fight, there are only two possible outcomes; you either win or you lose,” she said evenly, watching as the nose of  Eren’s board dipped into the wave and flipped him off into the ocean yet again. 

“So?” I prompted when it seemed like she wouldn’t go on.

“So, you might be hesitant to get into the fight -- because you’re afraid to get hurt and lose -- but while you were hesitating, the fight has moved around you and now you’re in it whether you like it or not. You can still keep walking, of course. There’s nothing stopping you. Just close your eyes and your ears and keep walking forward. But someone will inevitably get sick of that and slug you.”

Eren broke the surface and pulled himself up onto his board, heading back out beyond the break. Mikasa watched him paddle further away with her usual impassive expression.

Then she turned to me.

“You can lose without doing anything at all but, if you want to win, you have to fight.”

The next set came and Eren waited, bobbing over the first few, waiting for the biggest wave in the set he could still hope to catch. The water was grey in the dusk light, only the foam still clung to its pristine, glowing white. And Eren sat alone, a dark figure bobbing up and down on the grey waves atop his vibrant orange board.

Whatever feelings I might have for him, I still found myself thinking he should come in soon. Dusk is never a time you want to be on the water and this coast has always had its fair share of sharks. 

Just as I was thinking this, Mikasa stood from the quickly cooling sand and, at her signal, like a lighthouse on the rocks, Eren’s vibrant board started paddling towards the shore.

She looked down at me with what might have just about passed for a smile. I don’t know how much of my current situation she understood but it was pretty obvious she knew something of my silent doubts and her thoughts and memories had to be worth something.

“Thanks,” I told her.

“You’re welcome,” she replied just as Eren’s sandy feet appeared in front of us. “It was second-hand advice, anyway.”

Eren took the towel Mikasa held out to him. “What’s Kirschstein getting advice on?”

“Nothing.” My reply was instant.

“Something personal, Eren,” said Mikasa. “We’re going to head back now. You coming, Jean?”

“Nah, I -- I’ll hang around here a bit longer.” To digest things. “You going home or to the dorm?”

“Pft! The dorm, obviously. It’s Bert’s turn to cook which means free Reiner-food!” Eren grinned, all his problems seemingly washed away in the surf.

I tried to mirror his ease. “Right, well I’ll see you back there, then.”

“Don’t stay here too late,” Mikasa warned.

“I won’t, Mum.” I’d said it before it reached my brain and Mikasa glared before she turned to make sure Eren hadn’t heard. 

He was already off the sand and shouting for her to hurry up. 

With one last warning stare, Mikasa turned and the siblings headed back towards civilisation.

I turned too, back to the sea, and sat in the sand in silence. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you look at that, I'm still alive?! I've had this chapter almost finished (missing only about 200 words) for like two months now and I kind of just sat down today and went, 'right. this is getting done.'  
> The weirdest thing happened while writing this, though. Like, I actually wasn't sad enough to write depressed!jean? Like, what? That never happens. I had to actually make a sad playlist to set the tone for myself. But then that ended and I was too depressed to form coherent sentences. Now I'm on these new drugs that stop the feelings but don't stop the thoughts so I'm skipping merrily down the street like, 'I'm going to fail at everything! yay!' It's a weird time.   
> Anyway, you don't need to know that. These ANs aren't diary entries (or, at least, they're not supposed to be).
> 
> I hope you liked this? It's a bit longer than usual. I think I might have been gone for even longer than usual, though. There's no Marco -- not really, anyway, he'll be back next chapter -- but Max's death finally kind of hit Jean so there is that. Is it okay? Is it awful? Let me know. I'm going to go and stop rambling now. I'll see you all when I see you next!  
> Rori.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's nothing too australian in this chapter. With the exception of Medicare, which I've actually mentioned before and was so self-explanatory that I didn't bother putting in the 'australian notes'.
> 
> But, man, writing this chapter really made me think that, as much as Jean would hate it, he'd probably really benefit from a therapist.

“Hey Jean?” Connie’s voice comes out of the dark.

It had to be about 4:30. It was 2am when I’d last checked and I’d managed to fall into at least a half doze since then. 

“Fuck off, Springer,” I groaned in reply.

There was silence for another few minutes and I hoped that he’d actually taken my advice and gone back to sleep. But no. This was Connie. 

“Are you and Marco okay?” he whispered, as if the volume of his first question had been the problem.

I just groaned and rolled over to face the wall.

 

**

 

Okay, so avoiding him when I saw him in the library probably wasn’t what Mikasa had meant when she said I needed to fight if I wanted to win. 

And I was almost certain by this point that I  _ did  _ want to win. 

Because routine was fine, routine made everything numb and bearable, but my memory kept chiming in with all the vibrant colours that had existed when Marco was with me. About how much better than ‘fine’ things  _ could  _ be. And the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed that I had ever  _ not  _ loved Marco Bodt. I mean, clearly I’d fallen for Marco  _ Bosch  _ first but he wasn’t  _ my  _ Marco. He was Jeanne’s. And he was hardly a whole person. 

He was a whisp, a memory, coloured beautifully with all the ugly stains left out. He’d had his edges rounded out by time until he was as smooth and perfect as a stone thrown up on the shore. Smooth and perfect and unreal. He was shallow. I knew he had to have flaws, all human beings did. But that was the thing: Marco Bosch wasn’t a human being anymore. He was just a memory. And memories could always be more perfect, more beautiful, more bright and colourful, more  _ boring _ and  _ flat _ and  _ shallow _ than anything real.

And Marco Bodt was definitely real.

So it had to be him. It was him that I wanted. It was him that Jean Kirschstein, twenty-one year old student at the University of Trost loved. I was almost certain of it.

But I’m a coward. God, if you’ve gotten this far and haven’t realised that, then you’re beyond teaching. You know I’m a coward. So I saw him sitting there on the bright green upholstery of the library chair, glasses perched on his nose and headphones in with a concentrating frown on his face as he watched something seriously on his laptop, and I turned and hurried up to the next floor. 

Fucking hell. 

I didn’t even know  _ how  _ to fight.

 

**

 

I made an effort to come home more frequently. Maybe that would keep my parents from booking me an appointment with a shrink for a little while longer. I’m pretty sure telling me that dreams of a past life were most likely a delusion wasn’t actually going to help at all. I could practically see the grumpy old man he’d be already, thick glasses slipping down his nose and a clipboard in one hand, dressed like a history professor. ‘Nightmares are only nightmares,’ he’d say and I wouldn’t be allowed to punch him in the face.

So, I made the effort. I went to visit my family at least once a week. And I forced a smile while I was there. I don’t know if it was working but I hoped so.

“Is that you, Jean baby?” Mum’s voice called out as soon as I was in the door.

“Hey, Mum,” I called back, dumping my bag by the door and kicking off my shoes as I walked through to the living room. 

“Your Aunt Elsie is here!” she said just as I rounded the corner and saw them both sitting there on the couch, wine, soft cheeses, and crackers spread out on the coffee table in front of them. 

“Oh, hey!” I tried to sound enthusiastic as she leapt to her feet and glomped me, pressing one, bright-orange lipstick kiss to my cheek. 

“Honey! You’ve grown so much since Easter! Look at you!”

“I seriously doubt I’ve grown that much, Aunt Elsie. I’m already passed twenty…”

“Nonsense!” Aunt Elsie insisted. “Linda, you’ll be my witness, won’t you? Don’t you think he’s grown?”

Mum just reached for her glass of wine again and lay back against the couch cushions. “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I see him too regularly.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right. You’re no help at all. Heather!”

I turned to see Hitch strolling out of the bathroom, wiping her wet hands on the back of her jeans. She looked up at her name with the same sort of exhausted disinterest that was threatening to overtake my face. Maybe that was just her default expression after so many years of having Aunt Elsie for a mother. 

Aunt Elsie, herself, didn’t notice at all. She just grabbed her daughter by the elbow and dragged her over to the conversation.

“Heather,” she said, “don’t you think your cousin’s grown since we last saw him?”

Hitch plonked down on the couch and reached for the brie. “No.”

I smothered a smirk at her brusque reply and dropped down beside her, pouring myself a glass of wine. 

“Oh,” said Aunt Elsie shortly and then immediately fell back into conversation with my mother about… whatever it was they were talking about before. Politics? Economics? It was probably one of the two, knowing my mum.

Hitch and I just silently munched our way through the cheese and crackers before us, slouching deeper and deeper into the couch. 

“How’s -- you know?” asked Hitch at last, miming putting something on her head.

“Huh?” I garbled around a mouthful of camembert.

“You know! Easter-egg-hat-guy! Mark, or whatever?”

“Marco?” I choked.

Unfortunately, that single word happened to fall right in the middle of a lull in Mum and Aunt Elsie’s conversation. And Mum perked right up, propping herself out of the back cushion and leaning forward with the sort of warm smile that only hearing that I wasn’t a complete social failure ever brought to her face.

“Oh, yes!” she said, waving her wine glass in the air. I watched it slosh dangerously up the sides. “How is Marco, Jean?”

I probably imagined the way the air froze. Mum meant nothing by it, I knew that. She was just excited that I had any friends at all, let alone nice friends who were studying medicine and knew how to be polite. But Hitch… Hitch knew how things stood -- how they’d stood at Easter, anyway -- and I was pretty sure she’d had the most wine out of any of them.

So I opened my mouth to launch into some half-formed sentence in a desperate attempt to get in before her.

“Whoa…” she beat me to it. “You told  _ Aunty Lindy  _ about Easter-egg-hat-guy? Shit, I didn’t know you had the balls.”

“Hitch…” I warned.

“What?” said Mum and I felt the bottom fall out of the world. “Why wouldn’t he tell me about him? Marco’s not secretly a drug dealer or something, is he? Jean?” 

“Of course not,” I said.

“No, no, Linda,” said Hitch, reaching for more cheese. “It’s not that.”

I clenched my jaw. I didn’t want to be there. I really didn’t want to be there. 

So I got the fuck out of there.

“Excuse me,” I said quietly as I stood up and practically vaulted over Aunt Elsie’s legs so that I could make it to the stairs. 

I took them two at a time and, when that proved still too slow, I took them three at a time. My eye was twitching. My breath was shallow. My hands were shaking. And the worst part was, I knew I was being completely ridiculous. Mum was never going to kick me out of the house for dating a guy. I knew that. She just wasn’t that sort of person. She wasn’t Marco’s dad. 

But maybe that wasn’t the problem. Maybe the problem was how  _ pointless  _ coming out to her felt by then. What was the point when I’d already lost him? Marco was gone. Marco was long gone and I was too fucking cowardly to even take a step after him. So it didn’t matter where I fell on the spectrum, it didn’t matter what I told my parents, nothing mattered at all because Marco was gone. And I was risking… what? Embarrassment? Shame? Dishonour?

I wished it was none of those things, I wished I was a good enough person that I wouldn’t feel anything like those things for being who I was, but I knew it was all of them. 

I was risking all of them for nothing.

My back hit the wall and I slid down to the floor. Safe in the small space between my bed and my desk with my knees drawn up under my chin and my head in my hands, I let myself cry for the first time since the gallery. I’d really lost him. And he wasn’t coming back. Not without some herculean effort on my part that I was too fucking  _ weak _ to perform. 

So I just sat and felt the cold of the wall seep through my jumper and listened to the shrill whistle of warm air coming through the heating vents and heaved soggy, snotty breaths. I just sat there and cried until I couldn’t cry anymore.

 

I don’t know how long it was before there was a soft knock at my door. Long enough for me to slump sideways into the carpet and for my whole body to cramp. Long enough for the tears to have dried on my face and my eyes to have grown red and crusty. 

I didn’t say anything when I heard the knock. I didn’t say anything when I heard my name called through the door. I just lay there with glazed eyes and waited for something to happen. 

My door didn’t squeak when it opened -- Dad was too house proud to ever allow that -- and the soft footfalls were almost completely muffled by the carpet so it wasn’t until Mum knelt right beside my head and murmured, “Oh, Jean…” that I realised just how close she was. She didn’t say anything else, just placed one hand on my head and started to softly stroke my hair. 

“Mum,” I croaked out, probably a minute or so later. “Mum, I think I really fu-screwed up…”

“Really?” she said quietly, passively as if she was pretending not have noticed I was an actual adult who’d just been lying on the floor, crying for hours.

“Yeah,” I replied. 

She paused for a moment. “Is this about Marco?” I stiffened and she hurried on, her hand still soft and steady against my head. “Heather didn’t say any more than that but… you two  _ were  _ dating, weren’t you?”

Yet another tear slipped free as I nodded once against the carpet. 

“But not anymore…” said Mum gently.

I shook my head. 

“Were you still together when he came for dinner?”

I nodded. 

“So…” I heard her swallow, “before then, honey, what was wrong? Why were you… why were you so… so…”

“Sad?” I suggested.

A pause. “If that’s how you felt. Why were you so sad?”

I couldn’t tell her. She wouldn’t understand. The story was too long. The story was too crazy. There were just so many reasons that I couldn’t tell her the truth. 

But maybe… just one part of it.

“Marco’s brother,” I said at last, more to the floor than my mother. “Marco’s brother died.”

“Oh, Jean,” she said again.

“But it wasn’t just that he died. I mean, people die all the time. But… I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. I couldn’t… And Marco…”

“You didn’t know what to say to Marco,” she finished for me.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “What was I supposed to say? Was I just supposed to say, ‘sorry’ and then get on with my life? Expect Marco to get on with his life? A twenty year old kid kills himself and we’re all just supposed to pretend it never happened?”

Mum didn’t say anything for a long time, just kept weaving her fingers through my hair, just kept breathing her slow, steady mum-breaths that always seemed so constant and reliable.

“Sometimes,” she said at last, “you don’t have to say anything at all.” She took a deep breath. “Do you remember when your Oma died?”

I shook my head.

“I suppose you wouldn’t. You were only three. But you’re dad didn’t take it very well. He’d always felt guilty for not emigrating back to Germany with his parents when they went.”

“He couldn’t,” I said.

“Of course he couldn’t. Not very easily, anyway. We had you kids. We had friends here. We had a life here and a future. Trost was our home. Didn’t mean he didn’t feel guilty. But when your Oma died, he insisted we all fly out for the funeral. Me and Adrianne and you and your dad, all on this marathon plane ride. And sometimes, it’d all become too much for Paul and he’d start crying and then you’d start crying and then Adrianne and soon it was just me sitting with two screaming children and a sniffling husband, glaring down anyone who dared give us the stink eye for making noise. Because people are allowed to hurt, dammit.

“My point is: I don’t think your dad and I shared more than three words that plane ride and not much more than that the whole week we were in Germany. I just sat with him and held his hand, I brought his children to him and let them hold his hand. And, although neither of you really understood what was happening, I think you might have done more good for him than I did.

“Now, I don’t know if that was the best possible course of action I could have taken. Maybe there were other things I could have said or other things I could have done. But that was the very best I could do at the time. And, really, that’s all that matters.”

I sniffed and wiped my nose, forcing myself to sit up and lean against the wall again. Mum’s hand fell away with obvious reluctance.

“But I didn’t do anything for Marco,” I said miserably. 

“I’m sure that’s not true. My empathetic little boy who couldn’t help but cry when his daddy did?”

“I rejected his calls,” I insisted.

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“I didn’t want to let him go home for the funeral!”

“And?”

“And… and…”

“What about when he came here?” asked Mum. “Did you ignore him then? Did you turn him away and tell him to solve all his problems himself?”

“No, but--”

“You didn’t see that boy, Jean,” she interrupted. “You didn’t see him before he went up to see you. He was… I don’t even know how to describe it. Hollow? And then when he came down again? I almost didn’t recognise him. Suddenly he was all smiles and polite small talk and laughing at your father’s terrible jokes. I don’t know what you did or what you said but you can’t tell me you did nothing for him.”

“I…” I started, “I gave him a hug?” Was that really all I did? That’s all I ever gave him? “And told him I was sorry.” Yeah, but everyone says that. “And I tried to tell him he could talk to me.” But I never actually said it.

“Well, there you go. That’s not nothing,” said Mum as if everything was already resolved. 

I groaned and scratched irritably at the back of my head. She just wasn’t getting this. “But then I spent the rest of the evening insisting we were just friends and lying to everyone! That probably reversed any good I’d ever done!”

Mum scowled and I felt myself shuffle back on reflex alone. “Jean, baby,” she said, “you know your father and I would never think less of you for dating a man or dating a woman, dating both, dating neither or dating a hedgehog. So long as you’re safe and happy, we’re proud of you.”

“I know that!”

“But you were still scared,” she said and I could only nod dumbly. “You’ve heard stories, I don’t doubt.” I nodded again. “And sometimes logic isn’t always on speaking terms with our emotions.”

“Don’t I know it…” I grumbled and Mum smiled.

“You’re allowed to be scared, Jean-bo. We all get scared. And, sometimes, we all lie, too.”

“I know…” I said.

“And I’m sure Marco knows that, too. He’s a smart cookie, that one. And he loves you.”

And we were back to this. The conversation had come full circle.

“Yeah, maybe he used to, once upon a time,” I said, knocking my head back against the wall.

Mum shifted a little, tucking her legs underneath her so she could cross them into a slightly more comfortable position. 

“What happened, honey? You were still happy together when he had dinner with us, you said?”

“We were… we were  _ together _ , for sure, at dinner. I don’t know about happy.”

“So what changed? What couldn’t be fixed?”

I looked at her then. At her steady expression and her soft, sympathetic eyes that never left any doubt as to whether she was listening. I wish I’d gotten Mum’s soft, knowing brown eyes that knew how to listen rather than Dad’s harsh tiger eyes that only knew how to rip things down.

“I screwed up, Mum.” My voice cracked again and I hated it for it. “I said something… It wasn’t even something I didn’t mean -- I meant it! -- I just… It was so  _ stupid _ and I explained it so badly and I was so, so wrong and… Yeah, I just ruined everything.”

“Do you want to tell me what it was?”

And tell her about Jeanne? About the nightmares? No fucking way.

I shook my head. 

“Okay,” said Mum. “So you were wrong. Have you told him you were wrong?”

What? 

“No?” I’m not sure why it was a question. “We haven’t talked for, like, a month.”

“So, as far as he knows, you’re completely unrepentant? And you haven’t made any effort to contact him at all?”

It dawned on me suddenly and violently. The whole scene in the gallery. Everything I didn’t say. What had I actually said? What did Marco hear?

_ “It’s me.” _

_ “I don-” _

_ “Marco.” _

_ “No. That’s his name. The painter’s. Marco Bosch.” _

_ “But he  _ is  _ you!” _

And then nothing. I didn’t go after him. I didn’t try to correct him. I didn’t even let him drive me back to Trost. That was all I said. As far as Marco knew, I’d dragged him four hundred kilometres up the coast to tell him I was using him, to tell him to become someone he wasn’t and, when he refused to remold himself to suit my demands, I’d ignored him for a month -- cut him out of my life.

“Oh dear god…” I muttered without even meaning to. 

Mum stood up with a smile. “I’d try talking to him before you dismiss the whole thing as lost,” she said and then silently walked out of the room. 

I barely even noticed her go. 

 

**

 

_ Dear Marco, _

_ You probably don’t want to talk to me. You probably won’t even read this. In fact, you’re probably burning it righ--- _

 

**

 

_ Dear Marco,  _

_ I’ve been a dick. And _

 

**

 

_ Dear Marco, _

_ There are so many things I should have done better, so many things I should have said and so many I should have not said but I did (or didn’t) and that’s -- _

 

**

 

_ Dear Marco, _

_ Your dad’s a prick. You’re too nice to believe it but it’s true. Maybe he’ll change, one day. You’ve always believed in people’s ability to change. I guess that’s how you ended up with someone like me -- even if it was only for a little while. I hope to one day prove you right; that I can be everything you ever thought I could be. _

_ You’re not a terrible driver, but you think you are. It’s why you’re always so focused the minute you sit in the driver’s seat, even before the car’s on, and why you get so flustered through busy intersections and why you don’t like people talking to you while you’re concentrating. _

_ I really want to punch whoever it was that hurt you. That night at Ymir’s exhibit when we first got together, you should never have been so afraid to tell me you liked me, you should never have felt like you had to apologise for it. I don’t believe even your prick of a dad could have been the reason behind that. You should never be so afraid of being honest and I can only think that someone must have really hurt you in the past. Because you’re brave, Marco. You’re the guy who got hit in the face with a hockey stick and laughed it off. You’re the guy who stared down the mortality of his own brother and stood strong enough to carry you both for months. You’re the guy who risked his entire future, gave up everything, and bet it all on a career in medicine. You’re brave. You’re so brave. And you nobody should be able to make you so afraid. Not even me. Just give me a name, especially if it  _ is _ mine, and I’ll deck them for you. I might break my hand doing it, I’m still a twig, after all, but I wouldn’t mind it in the slightest for you. _

_ You need to go back to the eye doctor. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you sometimes lean back in your chair when something is still too close to read, even with your glasses on. Go back and get your prescription fixed. Optical is covered on Medicare, don’t you know? _

_ Sometimes I really hate how selfless you are. How much you care without even trying. How good you are at being there for people, at taking care of people. And I know you’ve somehow convinced yourself that your selflessness is really selfishness, that by saving everyone else you’re protecting your own heart, but the very fact that your heart bleeds so easily for everyone is proof enough, I think, of how truly selfless and caring you are. So, sometimes I hate it. But that's only because there are times when I just want to be the one who takes care of you. _

_ That thing you do with your feet before getting into bed is really fucking weird and fucking weirdly endearing. Enough said.  _

_ You can’t paint to save your life. Or, at least, you’ve said you can’t. But there’s no one who can’t be taught. And there’s no one who gets to decide overarchingly what is good and what is bad. Come paint with me, sometime. Even if you’re just doodling stick figures on the newspaper, as long as you’re enjoying it, I’ll consider it good art. _

_ Why do I love listening to you sing so much when you’re so bad at it? One day you and Adrianne will no doubt gang up against me with some ear splitting serenade and it’s strange how I’m only looking forward to it. _

_ I will never understand your love of marmosets. I mean, sure they’re cute but are they really  _ that  _ cute? _

 

_ These are all things I know about you, Marco Gordan Bodt, 23yr old student at the University of Trost, future doctor, ex-hockey player for Australia, middle child of five, most attractive housemate in his sharehouse (don’t tell Ymir I said that), most brilliant person I have ever met.  _

_ These are all things I know are true about you -- and none of them are true of Monsieur Marco Bosch (1827-1871). _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at that, it didn't even take me a month to update! (Which really shouldn't be as much of an accomplishment as it is...)
> 
> So, ah... wow? I feel a bit burnt out. I kind of just sat down, meaning to write that first tiny paragraph of Connie asking Jean about Marco in the middle of the night and then.... suddenly it's, like six hours later and I'm already posting? I literally just smashed this out (took a break for dinner, though ;p), read it through three times for typos and now, here we are.  
> Hopefully this is okay. Hopefully Linda is still enough like the Linda from earlier chapters... I wasn't really happy with how Hitch turned out but... I guess I'm playing the classic 'she's drunk!' excuse for OOC. Also, isn't Jean's mum also called Linda in Quartetship's 'A Different Song'? (is that still fandom requirement or has the fandom moved on while I haven't been paying attention?). Am I stealing from other authors again?
> 
> So, basically, enjoy! Let me know if I did good, or if I did bad, or... Just let me know! Thanks as always,  
> Ocean.
> 
> [edit: nope! ADS Jean's-mum is Lynnette (or is it Lynette? I've forgotten already...) Either way, make sure you check out this fic if you haven't already. It's gorgeous, even if I know so little about baseball I had to read it with wikipedia open. Guess that's just the aussie in me coming out...]

**Author's Note:**

> Please, come yell at me on tumblr :)  
> my [main](http://whereimnotme.tumblr.com/) which is always a bit eclectic and inconsistent or the [writing blog](https://iwritewiththemoonanddontgettobed.tumblr.com/) I just recently started and is still a bit of a mess.


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